Service Phases Out Old EFTPS Software

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 accounts for 80% of tax dollars paid. According to Mark Stevens, director of the Tax Collection Division of Treasury’s Financial Management Service, the Service has overall gotten a positive response to the new software from practitioners.

The IRS is urging tax professionals who have been using the dial-up or PC software to switch to the new batch-provider software, which Stevens describes as “the latest and greatest.” Tax professionals using the old PC software must register the new software and re-enroll all clients. The IRS says this process takes about two weeks.

The new EFTPS software, a complete user’s manual, and a quick start guide are available at https://www.eftps.com/eftps/ext/hds.html.