IRD says sorry for GST glitch

The Inland Revenue has apologised for a glitch which caused problems for people trying to lodge GST returns online and says the issue is now fixed.

The problems came to light after the accountant’s association spoke out about its members experiencing a number of problems including slow access to the IRD’s online service myIR and filing GST returns.

John Cuthbertson, tax leader at Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, said its members had been reporting slow access to the myIR system and problems loading returns for two weeks.

“It is when they access myIR things are very slow. People trying to file their GST returns early have been able to do it, but have had problems with lodging it. There has been a whole range of things like that.”

He said the problems were compounded by the phone system being already busy at this time of year.

The association met with the IRD Accountants have had issues using the Inland Revenue's online service.

last week to discuss the issues but Cuthbertson said the department had been unusually “quiet“on the problems.

Yesterday the IRD released a statement saying it believed the problems with its GST processing system were now resolved and blamed it on a network load rebalancer at the Inland Revenue’s telecommunications provider.

“Initially the problems had appeared to affect only a few customers, it had been growing, but it was thought the problem was with customer log-ins.

“However some very specific customer feedback led IR investigations to the problem with the provider’s network load rebalancer.

“That was quickly fixed by the provider.”

The Inland Revenue apologised to affected customers.

“IR apologises to affected customers we understand how frustrating it has been in the lead up to the GST filing date.”

It said most customers were now managing to file their GST returns.

But it urged anyone who may have problems meeting the filing deadline because of the issues to get in touch.

“If any customer has difficulty meeting their GST filing date because of issues with our online services, let us know, and we’ll be reasonable about that.”

The spokeswoman said the problems appeared to be isolated to those trying to do GST returns.