TurboTax Processing State Returns Once Again

TurboTax, the country's most popular do-it-yourself tax preparation software, is back up and running after it halted processing state tax returns for about 24 hours because of a spike in fraudulent filings. Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, said it resumed filing of state returns at about 6pm Eastern time yesterday with increased anti-fraud measures, a day after halting the process when state agencies reported a rise in filings with stolen personal information. Intuit is working with security company Palantir to investigate the problem.

So far, there has been no security breach of Intuit's systems, the company said. Instead, it believes personal information was stolen elsewhere and used to file returns on TurboTax. Intuit said state tax returns already filed when the halt began on Thursday will be transmitted as soon as possible. There haven't been issues with federal returns to date because the Internal Revenue Service has implemented stronger fraud detection policies, an Intuit spokesperson says. (More TurboTax stories.)