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The Australian Government welfare service, Centrelink, was the most commonly used service on the myGov e-government service platform at percent of all traffic for the month of May in 2019. In June and August 2018, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) experienced a spike in the number of logins. This corresponds with the end of the financial year on June 30 in Australia. In the months after June 30, the majority of tax-paying Australians are required to fill out and submit their annual tax return statements.

Tax time

Most Australians lodge their annual tax return through a tax agent. However, there has been little growth in the number of agent lodged tax returns in recent years, compared to the growing number of people who choose to do their tax themselves online. This notable growth in self-prepared tax returns is likely influenced by ongoing improvements to the ATO’s myTax online tax lodgement form, which auto-fills tax and income information and is free. Overall, red tape reduction through online services provided by the ATO was estimated to have saved individuals over ** million Australian dollars.

Paperless transactions and reducing red tape

Australians are embracing digitalized government services, with Centrelink customers alone engaging in over *** million online self-service transactions in 2019. E-government is not only convenient, but it can also be more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly. Social services customers can now opt to receive correspondence online, reducing paper usage for the department, and many online forms can be pre-filled with online account data, requiring less information to be filled out manually.