Late Fliers Drove Tax Site Traffic 470% Higher on Deadline Day
Tax Day came and went on Monday, April 18, 2022, and the traffic data from Cloudflare Radar makes it clear: a lot of Americans waited until the final hours to deal with their federal and state returns. DNS resolution data for official tax-related websites, which acts as a reliable proxy for user traffic, showed a spike of more than 470% compared to a typical day at 1:00 PM EST.
The broader national internet wasn't particularly strained, but there was a noticeable 18% increase in total US traffic at 10:00 PM EST that night compared to the prior Monday. That broader bump likely reflects the last-minute scramble, which was most visible when looking directly at tax domains.
Cloudflare Radar calculates the growth figures against a baseline determined by the mean DNS traffic levels for these services on March 31. The following charts break down the surge, focusing primarily on the volume of name resolution requests rather than raw page views.
Deadline Day Tops the Charts
For the combined set of 51 federal and state official tax sites, no other day in April came close to the activity seen on April 18. The demand wasn't just a late-night phenomenon; traffic remained above the month's previous highs from roughly 9:00 AM onward, with a 293% increase logged by that hour, and it stayed elevated until around 8:00 PM.
The peak growth days for these government sites were as follows:
- Monday, April 18 (Tax Day 2022), 13:00 — 472% growth.
- Thursday, April 14, 15:00 — 269%.
- Friday, April 15, 15:00 — 264%.
- Monday, April 11, 13:00 — 252%.
- Wednesday, April 13, 14:00 — 251%.
State-level sites saw a slightly larger overall growth than federal ones throughout the month. While the official government domains were heavily used during the work week, the data suggests that people preferred weekdays for their filing chores, activity on the weekends for these sites was noticeably lighter.
Commercial Software Sees a Weekend Bump
Private tax preparation services—from local shops to national brands—saw an even sharper uptick in traffic than their government counterparts. The peak here hit 680% growth on Tax Day itself at 7:00 PM EST. This category exhibited a slightly different pattern, with significant weekend activity happening earlier in April, running right alongside the weekday work on official portals.
The top five traffic days for commercial tax sites ranked as follows:
- Monday, April 18 (Tax Day 2022), 19:00 — 680% growth
- Sunday, April 17, 20:00 — 439%
- Friday, April 15, 12:00 — 328%
- Saturday, April 16, 14:00 — 326%
- Sunday, April 10, 15:00 — 311%
The Sunday before the deadline was particularly busy, with growth hitting 439% at 8:00 PM, and that momentum carried straight into the weekend's end. On the actual deadline day, request volume for these software platforms had already set an all-month high by 10:00 AM (478% growth). The sustained load didn't dip below the levels of previous days until after 10:00 PM.
Proving the Procrastination
The data paints a fairly consistent picture of human behavior. While the deadlines are known well in advance, a significant portion of the population chooses to wait until the absolute last possible moments to engage with tax portals. This is visible across both the official government infrastructure and the private tools citizens use to complete their filings.
