Japan's e-Tax Back Online After Suspicious Traffic Outage

Checks completed

By 11 a.m. on November 5, the agency said, the necessary measures and safety checks were complete, and it brought e-Tax back online. It added that it would continue working to provide stable and secure service. The announcement did not describe the nature of the suspicious traffic or how it was handled.

Why it matters

The outage hit at a busy time of year. Users took to social media to complain they could not complete year-end tax adjustments while e-Tax was down. For many employees and small businesses, the platform is the main route for filing and procedures with the tax authority, so even a short suspension has wide effects.

The incident also comes amid a run of unauthorized-access cases in Japan. These include a possible leak of up to 13,000 inquiries to the Digital Agency's website through the Studio web-building tool, and a warning from the National Cybersecurity Office that attacks could come at any time.

For now, the agency's position is that taxpayer data was not exposed. Users can file again through e-Tax, though further details on the suspicious communications have yet to be disclosed.