Computer tax filing to resume by Thursday: CRA

After an online outage lasting more than a week, Canadians should be able to e-file their tax returns by Thursday at the latest, the Canada Revenue Agency said Monday.

The computer glitch that has held up refunds and prevented Canadians from filing returns online has been identified. The fix is now being implemented.

"We have begun to bring some of our systems into production,” said CRA commissioner Michel Dorais in a statement on the agency's website.

"We expect to have all of our taxpayer services, including Efile, Netfile, Change My Address and return processing back into full service no later than on Thursday March 15th, 2007," he said.

The tax department said it would start recalling temporary employees to work beginning tomorrow to begin processing outstanding returns.

Dorais had ordered the agency's 75 databases shut down on March 5 after noticing "some irregularities" following software maintenance on the previous weekend.
All online access to Efile, Netfile and the My Account feature was affected by the shutdown.

The CRA said the processing of returns — including the issuing of refunds — was delayed until the problem could be fixed. The processing delays also affected paper-based returns that were mailed.