Relief, extensions assured following ATO tech saga

On Sunday, 11 December 2016, the ATO’s website, online services and portals – including the Tax Agent Portal, BAS Portal and Business Portal – began to experience extensive outages due to a hardware issue.

While the core services are now back up and running, the ATO is still working on getting things back to normal.

“Our core services, such as the portals and PLS are back up and running after the recent systems outages,” the ATO said in a statement.

“Due to the complexity of restoring these services, more work needs to occur.”

The ATO originally extended the December lodgement deadline and has now done the same for January.

The ATO has also advised that further lodgment referrals can be requested.

For those experiencing other related issues, they can submit a 'complex issue resolution' form to the ATO. 

“We understand the impact these outages have had on you, and we automatically deferred 15 January lodgements until 23 January,” the tax office said.

“Further lodgement deferrals can be requested.”