Local IT services firm DWS Advanced Business Solutions has retained the contract to support the Australian Taxation Office's e-tax software.
The new contract will see DWS maintain its position with the ATO for a further three years, with the option to extend the contract for two one-year periods. The deal is worth around $10 million over three years.
DWS, which had picked up the work with the ATO after it acquired local IT services firm, Turnaround Solutions, has supported the e-tax software for around three years. The taxation office has outsourced maintenance of its e-tax software since 2003, accruing a total bill of around $32 million during the period.
The software for the e-tax system has been written in a mix of Delphi, VB, C++, C# and VB.NET, with the user application being mainly in Delphi, which the ATO has previously said it would like to maintain.
The ATO has been considering extending support for e-tax to Linux and Mac OS X operating systems since 2007; however, it has yet to commit to the challenge citing complexities in doing so. ZDNet.com.au has yet to get a response from the taxation office on whether it has changed its position on the issue. For users of non-Windows machines, the ATO has recommended using a software emulator.
Last financial year 2.2 million Australians lodged their tax returns using e-tax, with the ATO last month claiming it had recorded an 8.5 per cent increase in e-tax lodgements compared to the same period last year.
They won't issue any Mac software as they are a so windows centric. It isn't hard for them to port this software, they just don't want to write it from the ground up, they only want to collect the govt. fat and take the cash and run.