In my illustrious career, I’ve worked with many tax officials: from city, county, state, to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the US and also with the Australian Tax Office (ATO) down under.

It started as people dealing with people, discussing paperwork, then people talking with machines and now your relationship with your tax authorities can be machine to machine. With no human interaction, your home computer can upload your tax return to tax office, their computer receives that data and then hopefully there is an electronic bank transfer for a refund coming your way!

I currently reside in Australia, but still do my own tax return for the US (IRS) and Australian authorities (ATO). Just the other day, I was thinking about the best ways to communicate with a large bureaucracy such as the ATO when my phone started vibrating. I reached into my pocket and was surprised to see it was the ATO texting.

Biometrics
This year, my relationship with the ATO went deeper: first texting, then it turned to biometrics. The text arrived conveniently during my lunch hour. It was a nice, helpful text message telling me that new pre-fill information was available for my e-tax. To end our texting relationship, I simply needed to reply STOP. To report SMS scams I should contact 13 28 61.

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