Thursday April 30, 2009
By TEH ENG HOCK,KNG ZHENG GUAN and RACHEL LAU
PETALING JAYA: For the second year in a row, taxpayers filing their tax returns online at the last minute have caused the Inland Revenue Board’s (IRB) computer servers to jam up.
On a normal day, filing the returns online would only take a couple of minutes but the process took hours in the last few days as today’s deadline approached.
IRB has acknowledged the problem, and advised that the best time to access the e-Filing system is between 1am and 7am.
Last year, the servers were also jammed up in the last few days before the April 30 deadline.
Taxpayers crowding the IRB office in Kelana Jaya yesterday as the deadline for filing their tax returns nears. - GLENN GUAN / The Star
About 1.2 million people - almost half of the 2.5 million taxpayers in the country - used the e-Filing system last year.
When the system was first introduced in 2006, only 187,000 taxpayers responded to online filing of taxes. The number grew by more than 350% in 2007, with 876,000 e-filers.
Counter services at the IRB headquarters in Jalan Duta, Kuala Lumpur, were extended to 10pm yesterday and will be extended until midnight today. More than 70 computers have been set up at the headquarters to assist taxpayers to file their taxes.
At 8am, there was already a growing crowd at the Shah Alam office while at noon the Kelana Jaya office was packed.
Kelana Jaya IRB public relations officer Noorhaya Ibrahim said there was an average of 3,000 people daily for the past week and the crowd had doubled in the last two days.
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