Annamaria Carey, Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for External Readiness in the Change Program provided an update on progress of the ATO Release 3 deployment of the new income tax system.
The meeting was advised that overall the ATO is pleased with how things are progressing. Based on feedback we are receiving, mainly from calls, we know that the two most important issues are the status of:
- refund processing, and
- portal functionality.
Annamaria advised:
- We recommenced processing activity statements on 27 January and have now cleared the backlog. Accounts have been updated to reflect this and are now visible on the portals.
- We have started processing a small number of returns that were lodged in early January; and our plan is to have the income tax returns backlog cleared by the end of February. We will keep tax practitioners informed if there are any changes to this timeframe. We are proceeding cautiously, to enable checking, ensure that income tax returns are processing as expected and to identify any issues.
- Some clients will start to receive notices of assessment and refunds this week. The numbers will gradually increase as we build-up back to our normal processing levels. We will issue a broadcast to agents who are likely to receive the first new version of notices of assessment in the next few days asking for feedback on the new notice. This should help us identify anything we need to deal with quickly.
- We have cleared the backlog of payments made during the shutdown period. This means that accounts are now updated with this information.
- We are doing limited income tax debt collection work while our systems are being upgraded, but will continue to action activity statement debt.
- Normal process for debt cases and hardship are in place, but have been broadened as we bed down the new system. We are offering a priority processing service for clients who need their income tax refunds while the system is being upgraded.
- Hardship cases currently require manual processing outside our systems and, although we will give this work a high priority, some may take longer than usual. It may be quicker for us to process these cases through our new systems than to manually process them.
Annamaria advised that we are monitoring calls and our intelligence networks closely to identify issues and respond appropriately. Not surprisingly the two main issues are the processing of refunds and the fact that some returns lodged prior to Christmas did not get processed as they were not 'cleanskins' and had errors or checks required prior to release of the refund. We are starting to ramp up the return processing with a further 50,000 returns to be processed this week -the plan is to clear the processing backlog by the end of February. The rider on this will be that some returns will be held up in our business as usual verification processes - and their processing may be further delayed whilst these checks are completed.
Meeting discussion
A number of questions were raised in general discussion, which included:
- Will interest on delayed refunds be paid? If the return is complete when lodged and we take more than thirty days after your client's income tax return is lodged to issue a notice of assessment and that assessment entitles them to a refund of tax, we will pay interest.
- Has the ATO considered putting some information in the media - to verify what tax agents are telling their clients? We did consider what media might be needed - but advertisements in the press nationally would have been very expensive. There is information on the front page of the ATO website which practitioners can refer their clients to.
- Have greater resources been allocated to expedite the 'High Risk Refund' backlogs and ensure there are not further delays for these clients who had already been waiting some time for their refunds? It is our understanding that this had occurred. The chair advised that in the GST area a lot of planning had gone into this workload and there had not been any significant processing issues impacting on BAS forms moving through the system.
- Problems with the TA Portal were raised. Members were advised that some problems had been identified in the last couple of days, including the inability to update a client record to Return Not Necessary and some occasional problems with report downloads. Fixes are being worked on. There also have been some intermittent outages, which are not Change Program related, and we believe these have now stabilised. Questions were also raised about:
- the latest timeframe for the new Portal, and
- when notices of assessment would be available on the Portal.
As the exact timeframes were not known, Annamaria undertook to provide a response through the secretariat out of session.
Action item
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5
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Description
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Secretariat to provide a response to members when available, on the current timetable for release of the new Portal and for notices of assessment being available via the Tax Agent Portal.
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Responsibility
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Secretariat
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Due date
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As soon as available
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There was an observation made that enquiries via the call centres were taking significantly longer as operators were having difficulty locating information on the ATO systems - adding to the time practitioners were spending on the phone.
Annamaria encouraged members to continue to provide enquiries or any feedback on change program issues to the following email address cpexternal@ato.gov.au Based on the information we receive we will update our website to keep everyone informed of any known issues, the impact they may have and when we expect to resolve them. Information will also be available in our eLink bulletins.
In closing, Annamaria thanked everyone for their contribution, patience and understanding.
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Last Modified: Monday, 31 January 2011