Cockblocked by the bot again.
Headed down to the office early this morning because it was raining and I couldn’t walk the dogs. All good, I thought. I’ll pivot to admin. I’ve got some GST stuff I need to knock over, and I resent spending my writing time on that, so this was a bit of a left-handed gift.
No. No, it wasn’t.
It was a trap. I don’t know how many of you have to deal with MyGov or MyId or the Relationship Authorisation Manager or whatever the fuck they’re calling it this week, but I spent about nine months last year trying to prove who I was to it, so that I could pay my tax.
I thought that was settled. I was wrong.
The reason I’m posting so early today is that I’m back in the GovID doom loop. Tried to log on to do my tax. Got cockblocked at the first screen. The website and the app were both, “Yeah, nah, not happening JB. What’re you up to for the next eight or nine months?”
The mark of a skilled writer is when the reader can imagine themselves in the shoes of the protagonist - even better when writer and protagonist are the same person. I file Australian tax returns for myself and my Indonesian wife (because I love her and don't think she deserves this bullshit), neither of us currently Australian resident. Getting past the MyGov gatekeeper is a nightmare. Just one of the many delights - when you log in it caches your identity somewhere, so it you try to log in to someone else's account it gets the two mixed up and has a massive dummy-spit. So I have to use a different browser to do my wife's taxes.
That said, once you actually get to the ATO site it's a blessed relief compared with anything that exists on the other side of the Pacific. You can actually just do your taxes with a few mouse clicks there, if they are as simple as my Australian affairs are currently (basically two bank accounts). Thankfully Quicken and Intuit haven't managed to buy enough Australian politicians to keep things opaque, as they have in the US. I was once at a party in Sydney and met an ATO fellow who had been working in Jakarta helping Indonesia sort out their tax system. He just unselfconsciously told me that this was because Australia has the most competently-run tax system in the world so we are in a position to help other countries. My first reaction, of course, was to snort in hilarity at this statement - but after thinking about it for a few seconds realised he might not have been far off the mark.
I spent 30+ years working in or adjacent to the Canberra Halls of Doom. In relation to IT projects, words such as 'intuitive', 'user-friendly' and 'simple', when invoked at all, mean different things there. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.