The Internal Revenue Service admitted it is struggling to keep up with the wave of tax returns filed on April 15. The result is the delay of acknowledgements by the Service to taxpayers as well as to the various states. The IRS said in an e-mail to tax professionals, “Due to the significant increase in federal and state submissions transmitted on April 15, the length of time to create federal acknowledgements and make them available for retrieval is taking longer than expected.”

The IRS added that the majority of state tax returns are linked to the acceptance of the federal tax return so the longer it takes the IRS to acknowledge the acceptance of the returns, the longer it will take the states to process their returns as well. In fact, the IRS has told tax professionals not to resubmit those returns if they have not received the acknowledgement. That would just further bog down the system.