Tax
software angst
blamed on last-minute
legislative changes |
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By Nathan Cochrane
it.mycareer.com.au |
Wednesday, August 22, 2001 |
Tax software makers
would bear no responsibility if the Federal Coalition lost power at
the next election, the number two professional tax practice software
maker said today. This was despite thousands of angry conservative
accountants vowing to vote Labor in retribution for the GST's negative
impact on the software used in their practices.
Speaking on a conference call to the media this morning, MYOB chief
executive Craig Winkler said making a connection between small business
anger amplified by software problems and elector voting intentions
was an "extremely long bow" to string. "No, I would say not at all,"
Winkler said, in response to a question about whether voter dissatisfaction
would be triggered by software failures. "We have no political axe
to grind at all. We simply take the information from the ATO which
is also non-political and try to provide a service in this case for
tax practitioners to prepare and lodge tax returns. It doesn't really
matter who's in power in those situations. "It's also a case where
every tax software provider is in the same situation so if you wanted
to make that argument you would have to extend that out."
Winkler blamed problems with providing the software this year on last-minute
changes to legislation, MYOB's move to a 32-bit platform and new database
architecture and Australian Taxation Office inability to provide trial
gateway services to test the software before released to the public.
He stopped short of recommending future federal governments reimburse
software vendors caught short by last-minute changes to legislation,
as happens in New Zealand and is advocated by some Australian tax
software makers. "That's probably not the solution," he said. "Our
preference would be that we work with the ATO more efficiently, more
effcectively and our legislators are more aware of the issues involved
in changing legislation and the timeframes in which they work. That's
the solution that we're interested in."
Yesterday The Age reported that tax agents and accountants with MYOB
and Solution 6 had experienced problems this year filing returns on
behalf of their clients. Winkler said MYOB Tax, the professional tax
software his company supplies to industry for this purpose, had about
4000 customers.
National Tax and Accountants' Association president, Ray Regan, said
he had lectured to 20,000 members this year and they were "wild" with
anger at the problems the GST caused. He said the trebling of tax
law complexity to 8500 pages was to blame. "It will lead at the end
of the day to practitioners and their clients voting against the government,"
Regan said. "Accountants will not hesitate to make it abundantly,
irrevocably clear it is the Howard government that hasn't understood
the disruption these laws have made to their (clients') business.
"Accountants are seeing that the Howard Government is a scapegoat
for their own angst having to write off so much time and they're not
going to hold back when talking to their customers." |
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