Downtime to persist with new ATO portals

As reported earlier, planned maintenance over weekends and in the evenings is impacting the productivity of sole practitioners and small firms in particular, which often leave their administrative work to hours outside of the business day.

An ATO spokesperson has since told Public Accountant that the new and improved online portal it is developing for tax agents will have similar maintenance requirements to its existing portals.

“The ATO is committed to building on this progress to provide a better experience for all taxpayers, tax and super professionals, and digital service providers who use our systems,” the spokesperson said.

“The new ATO online services for agents will have similar maintenance requirements to the existing tax and BAS agent portals.”

Further, the ATO spokesperson said it conducts regular maintenance of its systems to update them and ensure their stability and availability during peak lodgement periods.

“When we need to schedule this work, we do it over weekends and public holidays, do our best to avoid key due dates and give affected clients as much notice as possible to minimise any disruption to their business,” the spokesperson said.

“Our usage statistics show us that overnight, weekends and public holidays result in the least disruption to users.”

The ATO recently announced it would update its systems over a two-day period from 23 to 24 June, during which no tax returns can be processed.

Further, the ATO’s online systems, including the tax agent and BAS agent portals, and the Practitioner Lodgement Service (PLS) would be unavailable in part or in full for scheduled weekly maintenance every Tuesday from 11.30pm to Wednesday 7.00am; Thursday 11.30pm to Friday 7.00am; and Saturday 11.30pm to Sunday 7.00am (all AEST).

The Institute of Public Accountants has consistently lobbied for improvements to the tax agent portal, most recently pushing for ATO online services to be available 24/7 amid planned portal outages ahead of this year’s tax time.

The ATO has had a history of maintenance issues with its online systems, most notably in December 2016, when a storage hardware meltdown caused unprecedented and widespread failure of the ATO’s online systems, something taxation commissioner Chris Jordan labelled as the “worst unplanned system outage in recent memory”.

Then in March last year, the ATO admitted it had to put developments for online services on hold until its systems stabilised, and again in September when it defended a series of outages as “a reality of our complex IT operating environment”.

The issue was so problematic that, in July 2017, the federal opposition and former Senator for South Australia Nick Xenophon pressured the government to address the instability of the ATO’s digital systems.