NATIONWIDE — Trying to pay your taxes online on the Tuesday deadline? You couldn't do it through the IRS website.

  • Americans couldn't file taxes through IRS online system Tuesday
  • IRS: 'Certain systems experiencing technical difficulties'
  • Treasury secretary says people affected will be granted extensions

The online payment system at IRS.gov became unavailable at about 2:50 a.m. Tuesday, with no explanation of what happened.

Taxpayers also could set up a Payment Plan on the Internal Revenue Service's site.

The IRS said in a statement that "certain IRS systems are experiencing technical difficulties."

Because of the outages, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said extensions will be granted to those who couldn't file online Tuesday.

"We’ll make sure taxpayers have extensions once the system comes up to make sure they can use it and it in no way impacts people paying their taxes," Mnuchin said at an event in New Hampshire. "It was... a high volume technical issue that impacted the system."

IRS Acting Commissioner David Kautter testified during a House Oversight Hearing on Tuesday that a number of systems were down at the moment and that they were working to resolve the issue. 

It appears you can make a payment using a debit or credit card through the third party sites available on the IRS website, but there are fees associated with those sites.

About 5 million tax returns were filed on the final day of last year's tax season.