A number of the ACT Apple User Group members have been corresponding with the Australian Taxation Office to find out when a Mac compatible version of e-tax will be made available.

e-tax is a downloadable product used for completing your tax return on a home PC and forwarding it securely electronically into the ATO. e-tax is only available for the Windows platform. For a number of years they have been promising to produce a version for other operating systems, but have failed to deliver.

Despite numerous people corresponding with the ATO over this matter, so far no one has received satisfactory explanations of when a Mac version will be available. The response below is all you can expect from going through the “official” channels:

“In 2007, the Tax Office commenced work on redeveloping e-tax in order to make it compatible with any computer system that has internet access. The intent of the project was to test a redeveloped e-tax product with a small group of users in 2008. However, the project identified a number of challenges and complexities. These challenges were so significant that the Tax Office is not in a position to offer a redeveloped e-tax product for testing in 2008. At this stage the Tax Office is unable to provide a timeframe in which a redeveloped e-tax product would be available.”

On 1 July 2009 the ATO released the 2009 version of e-tax — in a PC only format again.

We ask all Apple User Groups to please publish the following in your magazine and/or email to your members:

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The Australian Taxation Office has a product, e-tax, for completing your tax return on a home PC and forwarding it securely electronically into the ATO and it also ensures that most refunds are issued in 14 days. Unfortunately e-tax is only available for the Windows platform. For a number of years the ATO has been promising to produce a version for other operating systems, but have failed to deliver.

As the ATO’s web site tells us: “e-tax is not compatible with Linux or Apple Macintosh computers. However, e-tax has been tested successfully on an Apple computer running OS X v10.4.3 with Virtual PC 7 software emulating a recommended Windows operating system.” So to use this ‘free’ product you have to purchase a copy of Windows and find a used version of Virtual PC as it has been discontinued by Microsoft. This shows how Microsoft-centric and out of touch the ATO is. If the ATO had developed e-tax in a cross platform version from the start it would have run on any operating system!

If you would like to run e-tax natively on your Mac, all Mac users need to start contacting executives in the ATO bureaucracy who can influence the product’s development and complain about the discrimination against Mac users. It’s no good sitting back and saying ‘somebody’ should do something – that somebody is you!

The Commissioner, Michael D’Ascenzo, takes the ATO’s Taxpayer’s Charter seriously. Under the Charter the ATO undertakes “To make it as easy as possible for you to comply with your tax obligations we work with the community to develop services, publications and other information that meet community needs…”. e-tax was used by 2.2 million taxpayers in 2008 and is a good product. Mac users deserve a fair go.

So I encourage everybody to shoot off a letter or email to the contacts below.

The official address send complaints is:
Complaints
Australian Taxation Office
Locked Bag 40
Dandenong Victoria 3175

But you may also like to include emails to a number of the ATO Executives, their email addresses are:
Michael.D’Ascenzo@ato.gov.au
Jennie.Granger@ato.gov.au
David.Butler@ato.gov.au
Bill.Gibson@ato.gov.au
Bruce.Quigley@ato.gov.au
Greg.Burgoyne@ato.gov.au
Raelene.Vivian@ato.gov.au
David.Diment@ato.gov.au

You can read the profiles of the ATO Executive on their website.

Then there are a number of organisations that can also put pressure on the ATO:
The Board of Taxation
The Commonwealth Ombudsman
The Inspector-General of Taxation

Your elected representative may also like to get a message from you.
A list of Federal Members is available and if you need to find out your federal electorate.

While you are at it, drop a copy of your complaint to the Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer.
The Treasurer The Hon Wayne Swan MP or The Assistant Treasurer, The Hon Nick Sherry MP

You can also write to your local newspaper. So get writing.
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Thank you to Trevor Drover, Secretary of the ACT Apple Users Group for providing the above information used in this article.

UPDATE: There is now an E-tax Online Petition and FaceBook Cause for e-tax. The more we can do to raise awareness, the better 🙂