Individual Tax Returns have been traditionally the domain of desktop software. Laptops are lugged from client to client with rekeying and transcribing information as a common practice. The entire system leverages on Australian Taxation Office’s ELS (Electronic Lodgment Service) platform in itself a legacy and unreliable system.
ATO now confirms its determination to phase out ELS by 2015 onwards in favour of SBR (Standard Business Reporting) solution, a more effective and faster way of financial reporting.
What does this mean for the tax agent? After all, the best technologies used improperly do not help in the efficiency of overworked tax practitioners. Will simply changing the ATO’s infrastructure help tax agents to be more efficient? The answer is no.
As more and more applications are moving towards the cloud, statutory and financial reporting is non exceptional. Australia’s first ITR on Cloud solution via the GovReports platform was released last September, a fully managed solution that brings the flexibility of desktop solutions and multiplies it with the power of the cloud.
Here are top three reasons why tax payers should move to ITR on Cloud with GovReports.
• Access anytime-anywhere. Tax agents are no longer restricted by their desktop. You can bring tax returns straight to your clients by offering a personalised service via GovReports (Tax Software) secure cloud platform.
• Nothing to install or update. GovReports (Tax Software) is a fully managed service. ATO updates such as forms and schedules are updated without having to reinstall software.
• GovReports (Tax Software) acts as an electronic archive to securely keep client attachments online reducing the need for desktop clutter during tax season. Using latest storage solutions everything is storable and searchable.
GovReports (Tax Software) as a one-stop-shop for financial reporting brings state of the art technologies to traditional platform. And as one GovReports’ clients reference:
‘Using GovReports (Tax Software) in comparison to Agent Portal is like comparing driving a Mercedes Benz with Model T-Ford. They both achieve the same result but the ride is very different’