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Tuesday 21 October 2014

Auskey on Yosemite (dealing with the Australian Taxation Office using a MacOS 10.10 system)

The Australian Taxation Office has a very fragile website called the Business Portal. When it works, it's fine, but the challenge is that if you modify anything on your computer at all, you are bound to cause BP to break.

So, if you have upgraded to Yosemite (MacOS 10.10), you can of course expect Business Portal to stop working, as it does after every upgrade. Usually there's a Whirlpool forum on how to get it working again, but I couldn't find one.

I took me a few hours tonight to figure it out. Fortunately my GST report isn't due until next week.

Step 1. Don't go to www.java.com, because Java 7 isn't supported on Yosemite.

Step 2. Don't install Java 8 from the Oracle download site either, because the business portal doesn't seem to work with Java 8.

The ECI client requires Java 6, for example.

Step 3. If you've done either of these, uninstall that version of Java, and remove the Java plug-in from your browser. Since Chrome doesn't do Java at all on MacOS this means Firefox and Safari.

Step 4. Download Java 6 from here: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1572

Step 5. Follow the procedure here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5559 in order to activate the plug in.

Step 6. Go to http://bp.ato.gov.au/


Update: the business portal does work with Java 8, thanks to Paul Martin....
After tearing my hair out, installing, reinstalling, failing... a tech support fellow had the solution:(I'm running Firefox 33.0.1 with Java 8u25 on Yosemite 10.10)- Go to Java Control Panel- Select Advanced- Scroll down to 'Advanced Security Settings' and DESELECT 'Use TLS 1.2'- Restart browser and login to the Business Portal

If you are reading this at the end of a long hard day wrestling with software bugs stopping you from filing your tax (which you probably didn't want to do either), why not settle down with a really fun book of nerd-geek poems? Guaranteed to lighten your day, has poems about everything from nuclear physics to time travel and helps pay for the cost of this blog:  When Medusa Went on Chatroulette

4 comments:

  1. You are a legend. After many hours I found your post. Restored Auskey (ATO site misleadingly says it is no longer needed... IT IS since Java 7 and 8 don't work with their lousy Portal on Mavericks) After removing them and restoring Java 6 from http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1572 I can lodge my tax... Thankyou!

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  2. It's worth noting that the ATO tech support have a public website with most of their support information. It's https://www.technicalhelpdesk.com.au/

    This is basically the same info their call centers get. For example a quick search on there for "java" reveals 265 known java issues with auskey. Also the Java 8 article on their front page will get auskey working fine on Yosemite.

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  3. Wow. Awesome tip. This happens every time I upgrade OSX. Thanks!

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  4. A Quick note that the Java Control panel is in the System Preferences..Thanks Paul

    ReplyDelete