2 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Popular California tax payment system is down — just as quarterly deadline nears
Californians trying to pay their second-quarter estimated taxes before Monday's deadline through the Franchise Tax Board's MyFTB application have been unable to access the online service since at least Tuesday night.
A warning on the FTB's Maintenance page as of Thursday afternoon said, 'We are experiencing technical issues that may impact some of our online services such as MyFTB, CalFile, and MEC (minimum essential coverage) Information Reporting. The issues also affect information we can provide over the phone.' It says taxpayers who need to make an online payment 'can use our version of Web Pay that doesn't require you to log into MyFTB. You can also use our general chat for non-confidential tax questions.'
'Earlier this week FTB experienced an internal system problem that affected some online self-service applications. The outage was not due to a cyber attack. Online services will be fully operational by Friday morning,' FTB spokesman Andrew LePage said via email. He did not elaborate on when the outage started or the cause.
Individuals and businesses are encouraged to set up a MyFTB account, which stores a wealth of taxpayer information, according to the FTB's website. It lets individuals view account balances, estimated payments and credits, payment history, a list and image of tax returns, notices and correspondence, activities that occurred on their account, a list of authorized representatives who can access their account and California wage and withholding information. They can view and update contact information and access WebPay and CalFile, a free tax-filing service for some people.
Palo Alto resident Skip Shapiro said he made his first-quarter estimated tax payment through his MyFTB account earlier his year but when he tried to access it Tuesday evening to make his second-quarter payment, it was down.
'It is troubling that what presumably is a critical means by which the state collects revenue is out of order,' he said via email.
Shapiro said he ended up using WebPay, 'which doesn't require a user ID and password (i.e. an account), so any payment made is a 'one-off' transaction whose history is not retained by the application. Conversely, this information is stored in my myFTB account.'
Spidell, an Anaheim publisher of state and federal tax information, has a brief note about the outage on its website and how it will affect tax professionals who — on behalf of their clients — need to make certain payments or ask the FTB questions.
