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Incidentally, if you have a business registered for GST in Australia you have to submit a quarterly activity statement. The tax office website had bizarre authe

Incidentally, if you have a business registered for GST in Australia you have to submit a quarterly activity statement. The tax office website had bizarre authentication requirements but the browser plugin was at least cross-platform. They now require you to use the myGovID app, which is - you guessed it - available only on the App Store and Play Store. You can't even run a business without being part of the duopoly. https://www.mygovid.gov.au/ https://www.mygovid.gov.au/

hugi 5y ago
How is that legal? Isn't that just incompetent government?
- bogwog 5y ago
  Yes, Google and Apple's current situation is the result of incompetent government.
- partomniscient 5y ago
  We're living in a time where if you don't have a mobile phone you can't complete the online form and therefore the transaction becomes impossible. This is even worse if you're on the phone and the person on the other end of the phone that works for the company is the one filling in the digital form. The fact that its now further embedded in an app. owned by international conglomerates is hardly suprising. They're slowly losing what control they had. Governments are incapable of doing sensible things involving ever changing technology. There are too many things understood by too few people for sensible decisions to be made, let alone worrying about do these things age well and just add to the behemoth of red tape^H^H^H^H digital bureaucratic cloud storage. Paper systems didn't have these problems (although they certainly had some disadvantages). The ACCC is one of Australia's few good independent bodies, but pretty much all of the others have had their funding greatly reduced over time. Whatever good ideas they come up with just get ignored a lot of the time, because corruption pays and ineptitude is normalised. The financial watchdog is basically toothless at this point. The Robodebt scheme [1] is just one of their recent screwups. Interestingly, there's now something similar that's come to light regarding Post Office budgets in the UK from a few decades ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
  - stanislavb 5y ago
    "Governments are incapable of doing sensible things involving ever changing technology." - I moved to Australia about 4 years ago. I'm pretty convinced that the Australian Gov is much ahead in regards to tech adoption compared to most places in EU and US. In my 4+ years in Oz, I had to visit an offline institution exactly 3 times (you can do almost everything online). Everything's been flawless, super easy and very well integrated - from procuring various docs to submitting a tax return. - Yes, we can always find something that could be improved; however, if you compare how things are run in Oz to most other countries, you will find out it's much ahead.
    - partomniscient 5y ago
      Its all fine until you have to complain about something going wrong and it becomes very trying to comply with whatever they need despite it being their fault. I got stuck in a bureaucratic loop because an OCR reader interpreted a 0 as an 8. The fact that the automated process changed status and started throwing more forms at me, even though none it makes sense in context. Just because it was programmed that way. I still get them. Filling in forms with 0's is easier than dealing with people who insist I should be getting them in the first place (one person worked out what had happened, but transferred me to another department to get it fixed where I inevitably had the internal phone system fail and hang up on me. The horrible hold music/talk experience where they tell you how wonderful everything is just makes me loathe to attempt it again. These things should happen less when human judgement is involved rather than cause-effect programming. You may be right though - I can't speak for many overseas systems. I did also get stuck in the UK tax system. They were sending me threatening letters, ironically I had to fill in multiple years worth of forms to escape the system even though I was in another country, and then they eventually worked out they owed me money. Then there were the server failures due to load, for a specific online petition. Noone cared, but it was basically due to using old MS technology called Webforms which creates gargantuan data blobs per user/session called ViewState, which ran the servers out of memory. I think the online census submissions process had a similar issue too. I do agree its nice to deal with these things from home rather than queue in some official building somewhere though. Maybe I just have a natural tendency to attract flies to bypewriters or something. Maybe I'm bitter because I've built entire sites for the government only for them to throw the lot away once it was done, because the site might make them look bad. I'm just very aware of the downsides of over-automation. If you're a valid case, but the existing system doesn't cater to you, then you become the problem rather than the system being the problem. Anyway, I still think its awesome that the ACCC noticed this entanglement and brought it to peoples attention, and are one of the few indepedent bodies left that have some teeth.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  > How is that legal? You are forgetting the number of democratic countries which forced their COVID app from Appstore/Playstore on their citizens. They came short of calling it mandatory download but mandated the app as entry pass for several services. You don't use a monopoly powered smartphone? You cannot afford a phone at all? Tough luck buddy(/s). Only reason these COVID pass apps didn't stick around in the democratic countries is because the apps didn't do what's it's supposed to do; Ironically because the app couldn't be made mandatory download thereby not achieving the critical mass.
  - hugi 5y ago
    What countries were that?
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      Not going to name countries and trigger a slugfest. But will include the List of countries with official contact tracing apps[1] and you can search for which services those apps were mandated. EFF commentary on these apps[2]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_apps#List_of_countries_with_official_contact_tracing_apps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_apps#List_of_countrie... [2]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/09/covid-19-tracking-technology-will-not-save-us https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/09/covid-19-tracking-tech...
      - hugi 5y ago
        My country (Iceland) has an official contact tracing app listed there. It was developed by volunteers and contributed to the government and the source is open on github. Nothing you said applies to it.
        Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
        Good to know, Good for Iceland residents. Note that I didn't say 'all democratic countries'.
hnick 5y ago
Or you can pay an accountant. But yes, I hate it.
Wolfenstein98k 5y ago
As per that site, you can still deal directly with the govt and avoid MyGovID.
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  As an Australian overseas I can guarantee you that it is nigh impossible to have dealings with most federal agencies without using that app. It's one of the few closed source apps I have on my phone and forces me to install a workaround like yalp in order to get it. (playstore requires a google login to use)
murphyslab 5y ago
When I was in grad school, the university's Student Union provided an extended health insurance plan. To get a reimbursement, you had two options for submitting a claim: (1) Paper forms submitted via the student union or (2) the insurance company's app which was only for Apple devices. The app's only functionality was to facilitate taking a photo (of a receipt) and uploading that photo, along with the user's details. While I've heard that they now have a Google Play app, I still have zero understanding of why they don't simply have a website where one can upload a photo and associated details.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  For many people, it's too complicated (as in, they don't know how) to transfer a photo into their computer and then upload it separately. Integrating a camera in the app is far easier. Still doesn't excuse being iOS-only, though.
  - aspaviento 5y ago
    Nowadays you can trigger the camera app from a website and get the image data directly in your web, making the experience of uploading a photo the same as any installed app.
    - swiley 5y ago
      The file upload input field has done this since iOS 4 or so.
- homero 5y ago
  Banks require apps to deposit checks for instance to get location and other data for anti fraud
simmo9000 5y ago
Why is this not conducting in "Exclusive Dealing"? https://www.accc.gov.au/business/anti-competitive-behaviour/exclusive-dealing https://www.accc.gov.au/business/anti-competitive-behaviour/... Is the Aus Gov able to do this to simply because it is not a corporation? as per http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/caca2010265/s47.html http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/cons...
StopHammoTime 5y ago
Just responding to this comment because all the comments below it seem to be tone deaf and are just complaining about Governments. BAS (and all tax documents) can still be submitted via a Tax Agent or via Mail. There is no "lock in". Chances are if you own a computer, you own an android and an apple phone, who cares. Mountain meet molehill. Source: https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Business-activity-statements-(BAS)/How-to-lodge-your-BAS/ https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Business-activity-statements...
- sdeframond 5y ago
  This reason speaking. However I am still worried that governments basically make us choose between 1/ buying in into this duopoly, or 2/ using slower, decade-old processes. It feels like if you want to stay up to date with society, you actually have no real choice. I mean, those apps could certainly be open-source and distributed through F-Droid as well. In Republic, these are "public things" after all.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > Chances are if you own a computer, you own an android and an apple phone, who cares. You're in this thread and you can't find anyone who cares about locking in a duopoly?
h0nd 5y ago
This is ridiculous. I start ignoring services and platforms that are limited to mobile OSes.
- amelius 5y ago
  You can still submit paperwork manually.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
In India, 3 major tax departments force you into proprietary software via 1. Gst department makes json data which enables third party devs to prepare stuff but government utilities are in "excel" format only. 2. Income tax department had return utilities in "excel" form and also a "Java" which never worked outside of windows. Now they have made a sleek electron app and guess what, windows only. 3. MCA, companies registrar forces users to upload forms in "adobe PDF" because it has inbuilt forms and validation and such. Absolutely no way to use other than windows. Now, there are around 50 mil taxpayers in India and if the government wanted, they can switch them to Foss products in an instant but Microsoft lobby is huge. Not that it benefits Microsoft, I for one have never paid for a Microsoft product, thanks to keygens. Still,
- Siira 5y ago
  > Microsoft lobby is huge I think an incompetent gov is a much more realistic hypothesis.

hugi 5y ago

How is that legal? Isn't that just incompetent government?

bogwog 5y ago
Yes, Google and Apple's current situation is the result of incompetent government.
partomniscient 5y ago
We're living in a time where if you don't have a mobile phone you can't complete the online form and therefore the transaction becomes impossible. This is even worse if you're on the phone and the person on the other end of the phone that works for the company is the one filling in the digital form. The fact that its now further embedded in an app. owned by international conglomerates is hardly suprising. They're slowly losing what control they had. Governments are incapable of doing sensible things involving ever changing technology. There are too many things understood by too few people for sensible decisions to be made, let alone worrying about do these things age well and just add to the behemoth of red tape^H^H^H^H digital bureaucratic cloud storage. Paper systems didn't have these problems (although they certainly had some disadvantages). The ACCC is one of Australia's few good independent bodies, but pretty much all of the others have had their funding greatly reduced over time. Whatever good ideas they come up with just get ignored a lot of the time, because corruption pays and ineptitude is normalised. The financial watchdog is basically toothless at this point. The Robodebt scheme [1] is just one of their recent screwups. Interestingly, there's now something similar that's come to light regarding Post Office budgets in the UK from a few decades ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
- stanislavb 5y ago
  "Governments are incapable of doing sensible things involving ever changing technology." - I moved to Australia about 4 years ago. I'm pretty convinced that the Australian Gov is much ahead in regards to tech adoption compared to most places in EU and US. In my 4+ years in Oz, I had to visit an offline institution exactly 3 times (you can do almost everything online). Everything's been flawless, super easy and very well integrated - from procuring various docs to submitting a tax return. - Yes, we can always find something that could be improved; however, if you compare how things are run in Oz to most other countries, you will find out it's much ahead.
  - partomniscient 5y ago
    Its all fine until you have to complain about something going wrong and it becomes very trying to comply with whatever they need despite it being their fault. I got stuck in a bureaucratic loop because an OCR reader interpreted a 0 as an 8. The fact that the automated process changed status and started throwing more forms at me, even though none it makes sense in context. Just because it was programmed that way. I still get them. Filling in forms with 0's is easier than dealing with people who insist I should be getting them in the first place (one person worked out what had happened, but transferred me to another department to get it fixed where I inevitably had the internal phone system fail and hang up on me. The horrible hold music/talk experience where they tell you how wonderful everything is just makes me loathe to attempt it again. These things should happen less when human judgement is involved rather than cause-effect programming. You may be right though - I can't speak for many overseas systems. I did also get stuck in the UK tax system. They were sending me threatening letters, ironically I had to fill in multiple years worth of forms to escape the system even though I was in another country, and then they eventually worked out they owed me money. Then there were the server failures due to load, for a specific online petition. Noone cared, but it was basically due to using old MS technology called Webforms which creates gargantuan data blobs per user/session called ViewState, which ran the servers out of memory. I think the online census submissions process had a similar issue too. I do agree its nice to deal with these things from home rather than queue in some official building somewhere though. Maybe I just have a natural tendency to attract flies to bypewriters or something. Maybe I'm bitter because I've built entire sites for the government only for them to throw the lot away once it was done, because the site might make them look bad. I'm just very aware of the downsides of over-automation. If you're a valid case, but the existing system doesn't cater to you, then you become the problem rather than the system being the problem. Anyway, I still think its awesome that the ACCC noticed this entanglement and brought it to peoples attention, and are one of the few indepedent bodies left that have some teeth.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> How is that legal? You are forgetting the number of democratic countries which forced their COVID app from Appstore/Playstore on their citizens. They came short of calling it mandatory download but mandated the app as entry pass for several services. You don't use a monopoly powered smartphone? You cannot afford a phone at all? Tough luck buddy(/s). Only reason these COVID pass apps didn't stick around in the democratic countries is because the apps didn't do what's it's supposed to do; Ironically because the app couldn't be made mandatory download thereby not achieving the critical mass.
- hugi 5y ago
  What countries were that?
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    Not going to name countries and trigger a slugfest. But will include the List of countries with official contact tracing apps[1] and you can search for which services those apps were mandated. EFF commentary on these apps[2]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_apps#List_of_countries_with_official_contact_tracing_apps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_apps#List_of_countrie... [2]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/09/covid-19-tracking-technology-will-not-save-us https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/09/covid-19-tracking-tech...
    - hugi 5y ago
      My country (Iceland) has an official contact tracing app listed there. It was developed by volunteers and contributed to the government and the source is open on github. Nothing you said applies to it.
      - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
        Good to know, Good for Iceland residents. Note that I didn't say 'all democratic countries'.

hnick 5y ago

Or you can pay an accountant. But yes, I hate it.

Wolfenstein98k 5y ago

As per that site, you can still deal directly with the govt and avoid MyGovID.

BelenusMordred 5y ago
As an Australian overseas I can guarantee you that it is nigh impossible to have dealings with most federal agencies without using that app. It's one of the few closed source apps I have on my phone and forces me to install a workaround like yalp in order to get it. (playstore requires a google login to use)

murphyslab 5y ago

When I was in grad school, the university's Student Union provided an extended health insurance plan. To get a reimbursement, you had two options for submitting a claim: (1) Paper forms submitted via the student union or (2) the insurance company's app which was only for Apple devices. The app's only functionality was to facilitate taking a photo (of a receipt) and uploading that photo, along with the user's details. While I've heard that they now have a Google Play app, I still have zero understanding of why they don't simply have a website where one can upload a photo and associated details.

Clewza313 5y ago
For many people, it's too complicated (as in, they don't know how) to transfer a photo into their computer and then upload it separately. Integrating a camera in the app is far easier. Still doesn't excuse being iOS-only, though.
- aspaviento 5y ago
  Nowadays you can trigger the camera app from a website and get the image data directly in your web, making the experience of uploading a photo the same as any installed app.
  - swiley 5y ago
    The file upload input field has done this since iOS 4 or so.
homero 5y ago
Banks require apps to deposit checks for instance to get location and other data for anti fraud

simmo9000 5y ago

Why is this not conducting in "Exclusive Dealing"? https://www.accc.gov.au/business/anti-competitive-behaviour/exclusive-dealing https://www.accc.gov.au/business/anti-competitive-behaviour/... Is the Aus Gov able to do this to simply because it is not a corporation? as per http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/caca2010265/s47.html http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/cons...

StopHammoTime 5y ago

Just responding to this comment because all the comments below it seem to be tone deaf and are just complaining about Governments. BAS (and all tax documents) can still be submitted via a Tax Agent or via Mail. There is no "lock in". Chances are if you own a computer, you own an android and an apple phone, who cares. Mountain meet molehill. Source: https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Business-activity-statements-(BAS)/How-to-lodge-your-BAS/ https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Business-activity-statements...

sdeframond 5y ago
This reason speaking. However I am still worried that governments basically make us choose between 1/ buying in into this duopoly, or 2/ using slower, decade-old processes. It feels like if you want to stay up to date with society, you actually have no real choice. I mean, those apps could certainly be open-source and distributed through F-Droid as well. In Republic, these are "public things" after all.
pessimizer 5y ago
> Chances are if you own a computer, you own an android and an apple phone, who cares. You're in this thread and you can't find anyone who cares about locking in a duopoly?

h0nd 5y ago

This is ridiculous. I start ignoring services and platforms that are limited to mobile OSes.

amelius 5y ago
You can still submit paperwork manually.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

In India, 3 major tax departments force you into proprietary software via 1. Gst department makes json data which enables third party devs to prepare stuff but government utilities are in "excel" format only. 2. Income tax department had return utilities in "excel" form and also a "Java" which never worked outside of windows. Now they have made a sleek electron app and guess what, windows only. 3. MCA, companies registrar forces users to upload forms in "adobe PDF" because it has inbuilt forms and validation and such. Absolutely no way to use other than windows. Now, there are around 50 mil taxpayers in India and if the government wanted, they can switch them to Foss products in an instant but Microsoft lobby is huge. Not that it benefits Microsoft, I for one have never paid for a Microsoft product, thanks to keygens. Still,

Siira 5y ago
> Microsoft lobby is huge I think an incompetent gov is a much more realistic hypothesis.