Mac users will (again) have to find a Windows machine if they want to fill out this year's tax return online.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has stated on its Web site that it is working on a solution for Mac users to fill out their tax online and will trial a possible solution in 2008, with the outlook of it being available in "future years" pending on the success of the trial.

Mac users running emulated versions of Windows might be able to use the e-tax software, but only Windows 2000 or XP is officially supported -- the ATO says Windows Vista "should" work.

While development and support of this essential piece of software is a difficult task, it's disappointing e-tax hasn't moved much sooner to a browser-based solution to circumvent operating system issues.

The existing application built for Win-32 machines and developed in Delphi just isn't up to the task and is out of date. Looking forward, however, the rumour around town is that IBM Global Services has the new government contract to develop the next iteration of the e-tax software. With IBM being a big Java development shop the result will hopefully run on Java which will result for end users an e-tax solution that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Surely it can't come fast enough for some.