The main website for people dealing with the Tax Office and federal social security agencies is down, tripping up tax-time and stopping taxpayers accessing their income statements.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
myGov, the Commonwealth's hub for its online services, is unavailable for people trying to lodge their tax returns, access Medicare statements or deal with Centrelink.
The website outage has hit the government in a week the Australian Taxation Office reported an unprecedented surge in calls from people grappling with the new payroll system for employers and accessing income statements on the myGov website.
IN OTHER NEWS:
Changes to the payroll system are directing more taxpayers to myGov this year, as those with more than 20 employees will no longer be supplied with a payment summary, and must log on to the website to get the document.
More than one million people have lodged a tax return after the Coalition's boost to refunds passed the Federal Parliament.
The Tax Office told clients online portals were down for taxpayers trying to lodge their returns this morning.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, the agency overseeing myGov, said some services were unavailable or experiencing slowness but did not say when the outage would end.
"The department is working on the issue and apologises for the inconvenience," she said.
The roll-out of single-touch payroll systems means about 9 million Australians will no longer get an end-of-year income statement, or group certificate, sent directly to them. This information will instead be uploaded online and via their myGov account.
More to come
- Receive our daily newsletter straight to your inbox each morning from The Border Mail. Sign up here