Tax return 2013
July has come around once again and as every Australian knows that means tax return time, and that means the annual zerosleeps whine about the ATO’s grip on technology.
The good news this year is that there’s a OS X version of E-Tax. Yay! But, oh, wait, what’s that I see on the ATO’s system requirements page for Mac?
Computer processor: Intel Pentium or equivalent
Hmm, not off to a great start since Apple have never put chips under the Pentium branding in their machines. And here’s another warning bell:
VoiceOver – Not recommended. Due to significant complexities identified, VoiceOver does not work correctly with e-tax.
That tells me the OS X version of E-Tax isn’t using standard OS X development tools.
What’s more worrying than any of this is that the ATO seem to be ploughing resources into developing desktop applications for private tax returns rather than building a web application for the same thing. I sure would love to learn more about the Office’s reasons behind this.