It's Tax Day! Is Intuit Ready for Possible TurboTax Chaos?

Remember last year's fiasco when TurboTax users flooded Intuit's e-filing servers at the last minute? The surge of data caused overtaxed (pun intended) servers, which meant that transactions that should take minutes took hours. Fortunately, the IRS waived penalties for users, and Intuit even refunded e-filing charges for affected users.

So, besides the obvious question: are you ready for Tax Day, a second question would be, is Intuit ready this year? According to Intuit, they are.

Of course, is that really the case?

According to an TurboTax spokesperson Julie Miller in an interview I heard on NPR,

"Last tax season at the end was so anxiety-producing and frustrating for our customers and we regret that tremendously. We've learned a lot about how we build our systems, how we need to test our systems, the kind of pressure that's on them in those peak filing days. And I think we're going to be ready for the 14th and 15th this year."

Despite that statement, however, there's this support post which was updated on 4/14:

TurboTax Experiencing Extremely High Volume

Updated: 4/14/2008 Article ID: 6222

As the tax deadline approaches, TurboTax is experiencing extremely high customer volume. To ensure the highest quality experience, you may experience brief periods where you cannot log in to TurboTax Online. If this happens, please wait a few minutes and try again. TurboTax is working as planned.

Our highest volumes occur in the evening.

If you feel you will not be able to complete your return on time, you may want to consider filing for an extension.

Although the post seems to address TurboTax Online issues, not those with the standalone product, it still sounds like a repeat of last year may be in the offing.

It's also unnerving that when I tried to get into the TurboTax Live Community Forum, I received this error:

TurboTax Live Community

We are experiencing high demand at this time.

We will allow access as soon as possible.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice ... despite Intuit's assurances, if you haven't filed, don't want until the last minute to e-file. Do it ASAP.

Oh, and me? I waited until relatively late this year, but still filed last Friday - and I used H&R Block's TaxCut.