Service phases out old EFTPS software.

• Author: Nevius, Alistair M.
• Position: FROM THE IRS

The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS) allows payment of all federal taxes--including income, employment, estimated, and excise taxes--by phone, online, or through the use of special software. The Service recently announced that it will stop accepting EFTPS payments through two obsolete software interfaces. A legacy dial-up version of the EFTPS software stopped being supported after October 31, 2007, and a ten-year-old PC software version will not be supported after January 31, 2008.

According to the IRS, fewer than 400 tax professionals were still using the dial-up software, but more than 13,000 made payments using the PC batch-filer software during 2007.

The Service has concentrated its development efforts on new batch-provider software, which was introduced in May 2006. The new EFTPS software can send up to 1,000 client enrollments and 5,000 payments in a single transmission. During 2007, 3.4 million payments were made using the new software, and currently EFTPS...