Revenue fixes self assessment website

The Inland Revenue has announced that the technical problems which hit its SA Online self-assessment website last week have been resolved.

The Revenue, and its supplier EDS, investigated the network glitch over the weekend, after the site failed to cope with high demand for filing tax returns ahead of the 30 September deadline.

According to a Revenue spokesman, the cause of the problem was narrowed down to the "network look-up tables", the communication link on SA Online between its web hosting environment and its database.

After making the necessary configuration changes to the tables, it was also necessary to reboot the servers.

"It should be stressed that at no time was the filing by internet service unavailable," said the spokesman.

"Since the changes have been made customers have been able to freely access SA Online, but we will continue to monitor the situation closely."

The message advising people to avoid filing returns at the busiest times - between 7pm and 11pm - has now been removed.

The spokesman claimed that over 17,000 tax returns were successfully sent over the internet during the weekend, "bringing the total for the year to April 2003 to just under 140,000".