DWS retains ATO e-tax support deal

Local IT services firm DWS Advanced Business Solutions has retained the contract to support the Australian Taxation Office's e-tax software.

The new contract will see DWS maintain its position with the ATO for a further three years, with the option to extend the contract for two one-year periods. The deal is worth around $10 million over three years.

DWS, which had picked up the work with the ATO after it acquired local IT services firm, Turnaround Solutions, has supported the e-tax software for around three years. The taxation office has outsourced maintenance of its e-tax software since 2003, accruing a total bill of around $32 million during the period.

The software for the e-tax system has been written in a mix of Delphi, VB, C++, C# and VB.NET, with the user application being mainly in Delphi, which the ATO has previously said it would like to maintain.

The ATO has been considering extending support for e-tax to Linux and Mac OS X operating systems since 2007; however, it has yet to commit to the challenge citing complexities in doing so. ZDNet.com.au has yet to get a response from the taxation office on whether it has changed its position on the issue. For users of non-Windows machines, the ATO has recommended using a software emulator.

Last financial year 2.2 million Australians lodged their tax returns using e-tax, with the ATO last month claiming it had recorded an 8.5 per cent increase in e-tax lodgements compared to the same period last year.