Actually, Wednesday at midnight is the deadline for filing taxes and paying any outstanding amounts to the Canada Revenue Agency.

However, it seems the CRA announced on Wednesday that it has extended the deadline for online tax filing to May 6 due to the heavy traffic that has been slowing down its Netfile (netfile.gc.ca) website.

According to reports on the Globe and Mail, the agency posted an online notice yesterday announcing an extension for submitting returns saying that Canadians now have until Tuesday, May 6, 2008 to transmit their returns and that it would be considered as filed on time.

The Globe and Mail says that a software glitch forced Netfile's servers to go down for nine days in March 2007, but a CRA spokesman says that this year the website hasn't crashed and that it is just lagging because of all the traffic it is receiving.

A quick hop over to the Netfile site seems to reveal that the website isn't running into any sluggish problems at the moment.

Netfile is one of the CRA's electronic tax filing options and enables Canadians to file their personal income tax and benefit returns directly to the CRA through the Internet, either via purchased software installed on a computer or through Netfile's web-based service. The advantage to this seems to be that the CRA is able to process returns much faster, because of the lack of paper, and taxpayers are being sent their refunds within a week or so instead of the usual six-plus weeks.

Approximately 4.1 million tax returns were filed through Netfile last year, which represents about 17 per cent of the total returns received by CRA, says the Globe and Mail.