Japan's e-Tax system went offline on November 4 after the National Tax Agency detected suspicious traffic and began emergency maintenance on its equipment to investigate. The agency has not said when the service will return.
e-Tax handles online tax returns and payments. It became unusable around midday, and by shortly after noon users were posting that they had tried to pay tax during their lunch break and found the system under maintenance, or that the shutdown had come without warning.
The agency announced the maintenance on X a little after 8 p.m., more than eight hours after the outage began. It said further notice on when the work will finish would be posted on the e-Tax website.
Users complain of late notice
Users responded with complaints that the announcement came too late, and with alarm from people who said they could not complete their year-end tax adjustment — the annual reconciliation of income tax that many employees file through their employers in the closing months of the year.
The agency gave no detail on the nature of the traffic it detected, and did not say whether any data had been affected.