Study: Tax Sites Burdened by Heavy Traffic
No surprise, many Internet-savvy Americans have gone online in preparation for the IRS' April 16 tax-filing deadline.
However, the increased traffic to these tax-preparation sites may not be beneficial to the vendors or to their visitors, according to Keynote Systems, a provider of online performance measurement, diagnostic and consulting services.
"With the tax day less than six weeks away, and the public turning to online tax sites, Keynote is measuring the performance and availability to online filers of the major tax preparation sites, as well as the IRS site for obtaining and filing forms," said Mary Lindsay, a company spokesperson. "We have found that some financial service sites are being 'taxed' under the heavy load."
Keynote
The company's findings, for the month of February, include:
The first two
weeks of good performance, however, gave quicken.com/taxes a better overall
average for the month than TaxCut.com and HRBlock.com.
Meanwhile, the download performance report for the month, calculates
that: The average for all of the sites for the month was 2.79 seconds and a
91.4 percent success rate.
, which is based in San Mateo, Calif., is
monitoring these sites as well as releasing regular performance reports
between now and the tax-filing deadline.
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