I am trying to file my tax return. I got most of the way through when the IRD‘s server (interact1.ird.govt.nz) stopped responding. It seems a pretty fatal crash because I can’t even start again from the beginning. From the name I guess they are running some ASP CMS called Interact Intranet. From their site “Interact runs on standard Microsoft technology, integrating seamlessly with your existing infrastructure.” That’ll be the problem! Someone tell the IRD to install some decent Linux webservers so I can do my tax return. Netcraft shows the main webserver www.ird.govt.nz is running Linux/Apache and that works fine.

Sidenote: I worked out why my tax to pay is more than expected: my bank interest is only having resident witholding tax deducted at 19.5% instead of 39%.

Update: Traffic is being directed to interact2.ird.govt.nz now. Time to try again.

Update2: No, interact2.ird.govt.nz isn’t responding either now. Will have to try again tomorrow.

Update3: Finally done. interact2 managed to stay alive long enough for me to file my tax return this morning.