ATO web glitch taxes patience
The Australian Taxation Office was yesterday forced to apologise to thousands of people understood to be affected by a website glitch which left them unable to lodge their tax returns this week.
Taxpayers who are understood to have tried to use the ATO’s Mytax or e-tax programs in the first two days of the financial year received error messages and were unable to lodge their tax returns from yesterday.
The ATO yesterday confirmed the problems were caused by the Federal Government’s new MyGov website, which MyTax and e-tax users have to register to before they are able to lodge their tax returns online
“Tax practitioners: Portals still experiencing intermittent issues, we are working to resolve this urgently & apologise for any inconvenience,” the ATO said on Twitter yesterday.
Yesterday morning the ATO announced it had fixed the problems and claimed the impact was “limited”, although several social media users vented their frustrations at being unable to lodge their tax returns into this afternoon.
“Hey @ato_gov_au your "mytax" has some bugs and locked me out for 12 hours. Not very user friendly,” one Twitter user complained.
Financial planner Nick Bruining said there would be thousands of people – including retirees and those who had stopped working before the end of the tax year - who tried to lodge their tax to beat a rush expected at the end of the month.
Some tax accountants, he said, also found themselves unable to use the system.
“Had this happened at the end of July when most people would be in a position to lodge them, then it obviously would have been quite a disaster,” he said.
“There are people who rely on their refund and it could put back their purchases and put their plans on hold.”
