Australian Taxation Office discriminates against Mac users

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July 24, 2008

Australian Taxation Office discriminates against Mac users

Posted Jul. 24, ’08, 10:47 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar

Category | Software

They don’t call it Down Under for nothin’—they do everything downright backwards. Their seasons come at the wrong time of year, their water spins the wrong way down the drain, and now the guv’ment won’t let our Aussie Mac friends pay their taxes with the federally-supplied software.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

It only offers e-tax to computer users with Windows or Mac-owners who fork out up to $150 for software which emulates a recommended Windows operating system.

The Australian Taxation Office apparently has been working on a Mac version for a few years now, but doesn’t have much to show for it. Furthermore, Matthew Powell, the editor of Macworld Australia says that the Asia-Pacific region is one of the fastest growing regions in the world for the company, so there’s no reason for Oz to lag behind.

As he told the SMH: “Apple doesn’t break down its users by geography, but the world-wide base of Mac-users is something in the realm of 30 million. About half of them are outside the US and I can tell you that last year Apple had 74 per cent growth in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes Australia.”

Ok Canberra, how about just making a platform-neutral web version if the Mac-version is too hard? Hrm?

5 Comments

James Madley said:

Really? I hadn't noticed.

Oh wait, yes I have. For the last three years my dad has been doing his taxes on my computer because it's the only one that has Windows installed in some way.

2006 was in VirtualPC 7
2007 was with Boot Camp
2008 was in VMWare

Had to update our modem via VMWare as well. Thank you ATO and BigPond for making life harder.

July 24, 2008 3:26 PM

Graffekta said:

The ironic thing is from memory when I used it years ago it was just a Java app...

July 24, 2008 3:53 PM

Ross said:

The problem is that the ATO is now very much a .NET shop, maybe someone could try to get eTax up and running via Mono:)

July 24, 2008 5:22 PM

MB said:

Or how about a secure web version? It doesn't have to be a downloaded executable.

July 24, 2008 5:24 PM