Maker of TurboTax Apologizes for Delays

Intuit software TurboTax, Quicken and QuickBooks on sale at Micro Center computer store in Santa Clara, Calif., in this Monday, Feb. 13, 2006 file photo. The company that makes the popular TurboTax and ProSeries tax software said it expects to hear from the IRS whether any taxpayers who used its swamped e-filing system would be penalized for submitting late returns. A flood of last-minute tax filers overwhelmed servers of Intuit Inc. on Tuesday, April 17, 2007, causing hours-long delays in getting forms sent in electronically to the government, said Harry Pforzheimer, a spokesman for the Mountain View-based company. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file) (Paul Sakuma - AP)

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Intuit Inc., the maker of TurboTax and other software that caused delays and headaches for an untold number of tax filers earlier this week, issued an apology Thursday and promised improvements to prevent a reoccurrence.

"We deeply regret the frustration and anxiety this caused our customers," said Steve Bennett, president and chief executive officer of Intuit. "This is not the experience customers have come to expect from Intuit. It's not acceptable to us, and we will do right by our customers who were impacted by this delay."

A flood of last-minute electronic tax return submissions swamped the Mountain View-based company's servers Tuesday, leading to problems that blocked some customers from filing or from getting confirmation that their returns were retrieved in time to meet the Internal Revenue Service deadline.

Intuit said Thursday it had found that the company's servers were prepared to handle the large capacity of filings, but an intermittent problem with the database in the company's e-filing system caused the painful processing delays.

The glitch has since been fixed, the company said.

"The e-filing system is running properly now, and we'll continue to take the necessary steps to ensure it doesn't happen again," Bennett said.

The IRS agreed to extend the filing deadline to midnight Thursday for people who were using Intuit's TurboTax, ProSeries and Lacerte software and had encountered problems from the computer-related delays.

Intuit also said it would pay any penalties that customers incur as a result of the problem, although none are anticipated.

The company said it sold more than 14.4 million units of TurboTax federal software for the tax season as of Wednesday, an increase of 5 percent from the year-ago period.