US Tax-Filing Sites Cope Well With Last Minute Rush

by Leroy Baker, Tax-News.com, New York

22 April 2003

With the US tax-filing deadline of April 15th now past, consultant Gomez Inc has published a report on the performance of the top tax-filing sites, giving them generally high marks for their response times in the face of the usual tsunami of late filers which hit them on the 15th.

Average response time for the sites during the 2-week run up to the 15th was 2.86 seconds, with availability at 99.8%; on the 15th, response time improved to 1.95 seconds, but availability slipped to 99.2%. There were some wide disparities in performance, though, with the IRS taking up to 8 seconds to load a requested page at times on the 14th.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, 22 million taxpayers logged on to the tax preparation sites this year in February, 15% more than in the previous year. IRS traffic was up 25%, market leader TurboTax came in second with 6.8 million visitors, up 20%, while HRBlock drew 3 million visitors, and TaxAct.com drew 2 million, up 75% on last February.

These increases seem impressive, but they have to be seen in the light of the Free File Alliance, in which 17 tax-preparation and filing sites linked to the IRS, allowing low-income taxpayers to file at no charge. It seems that take-up of the free service has not been widespread.

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