The ATO introduced a new income tax processing system in January 2010 and is in the process of converting approximately 27 million taxpayer records, 331 million accounts and 282 million forms into their new system.

This change program involves a staged implementation of a new integrated core processing system to replace multiple systems that have been used to process registrations, forms, payments and accounting transactions.

Some of the major changes include changes to the notice of assessment to improve layout and a new statement of account for income tax.

Because of this switch, the ATO has a backlog of returns that were lodged in January 2010. The ATO expected to have this backlog cleared by the end of February 2010, but by end of March they were still struggling.

Even worse is the 140,000 assessments issued without refund cheques – this is not anything to do with your tax agent. 

We hope the ATO will be apologising profusely and paying interest.