The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) was forced last year to extend the deadline for lodging business activity statements following problems with it Electronic Lodgement System (ELS). Today, the ATO put the problems of a year ago down to two software providers not getting software to customers on time.
-We have been consulting with software providers all the way through the year because of what happened last year," an ATO spokesperson told ZDNet Australia. -As far as we're aware, everything is on track."
Shadow Minister for IT, Senator Lundy, brought last year's skeletons out of the ATO closet in a statement released yesterday.
"Tax agents will vividly recall the nightmare of last year's experience with electronic lodgement, which caused so many delays that the ATO was forced to extend deadlines for business activity statements," Lundy said.
"The ATO has had over a year to fix the errors that made the electronic lodgement process such a shocker last year. No doubt tax agents around Australia will be hoping that there won't be a repeat performance."
The ATO spokesperson said that the software providers fell behind schedule last year because they only had about a month to implement changes that affected tax returns that came through with a later-than-usual Federal Budget.
According to Lundy, however, problems such as those encountered last year -puts people off the whole process".
"It is extremely important that this year the ATO gets it right," Lundy said.
My wife and I submitted our 2002 returns 4 hrs before the deadline using E-Lodgement. We received cheques two weeks later !!!.
ATO should be congratulated for an efficient and effective system.