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As hard as it may seem, the Australian Tax Office has played favourites with Microsoft for 15 years, yes my dear Mac users, if you wanted to file your tax return online, you could only do it on a Windows PC. I know it’s 2013 but can you imagine what machines the bean counters use??

But it seems now the ATO has accepted that almost half of the world uses Macs so it has spent $5.2m on moving its e-tax to Mac.

I’m a little confused as my website didn’t cost me $5.2 million to be compatible with every OS out there but hey?

WAtoday reports:

Now the Tax Office says it will finally provide functionality for Mac users from July.
“We are working to deliver a version of e-tax for Mac users for this tax time, which is currently undergoing development and testing by the [Australian Taxation Office],” a spokeswoman told Fairfax Media, after tech website iTnews first reported the news on Friday.Advertisement“We aim for e-tax to be available for Mac users from July 2013 and have partnered with DWS to achieve this, ” the spokeswoman added.Government tender documents reveal the tax office paid Melbourne IT company DWS $5,220,668.82 to get e-tax working on Macs. Of that, about $4.9 million was spent on “software maintenance and support” and $279,320.46 on a feasibility study.Similar tender documents reveal that the Tax Office has spent a total of $32.3 million on developing and supporting the Windows version to date.”

It really makes me wonder about what else our tax dollars are being spent on. Perhaps the Gillard Gov’t should look at some oversight on what they are already wasting money on instead of devising new taxes and levies.

Now I bet I’m audited this year!