This one hot of the 'Australian' press, no mention of Y2K; though the MO is obvious to those who have read the Australian National Auditors Office report number 27# on the results of an commonwealth agency survey conducted in 97/98.

Re Timothy J Wilbur ******************** Beyond 2000 Awareness Project;

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Red tape delays tax refunds By KEITH GOSMAN 1nov98

TAX red tape has jammed up more than 200,000 tax returns this year at the same time as the Australian Tax Office has been dogged with computer meltdowns.

The Australian Taxpayers' Association also said over 100,000 amended returns concerning self-education expenses were sitting on the ATO backburner.

These amended returns were a "low priority" because of resource problems created by the computer glitchs which the ATO says it has fixed, according to the ATA.

ATA national director Peter McDonald said the number of returns lodged by tax agents was down "quite significantly" on the number lodged at the same time last year.

Tax agents lodge about 80 per cent of all tax returns.

"If those (200,000) returns had been lodged, the delay in processing would have been even greater," Mr McDonald said.

He warned the ATO that revenue collection would become "slower and slower" because of the raft of new changes, rebates and schedules.

Computer problems have plagued the tax office since July and the time taken to process returns and send out refunds has blown out by weeks. The ATO conceded last month that 525,000 returns had been delayed by the problems in its vast computer network.

In August, the ATO sent a bulletin to all tax agents informing them of a possible two-week delay in receiving assessments.

Early in July, the ATO admitted that computer software problems were causing delays.

An ATO spokesman admitted last month that the office had encountered "intermittent and sporadic hardware and software problems" within mainframe equipment used for tax-return processing since July.

Mr McDonald said the ATO had admitted that it had mishandled the situation by not keeping agents informed about the problems and delays.

"Even they will admit it hasn't been their finest year," he said.

He blamed the 200,000-odd drop in lodgments this year on the increase in the ATO's paper war which included a range of new requirements needing extra work.

Part of this extra workload being faced by tax agents was being caused by changes in the tax return format, he said.

Additional information also was now required because of the various ATO enforcement programs, he said.

-- Timothy J Wilbur (timkaz@nor.com.au), October 31, 1998

Answers

Do I hear any bureacratic double-speak here? Ignoring possible y2K interfaces, which would seem to only exaggerate the problem.

NZ should take over here?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 05, 1998.