PHILIPSBURG--The system at Tax Administration (Tax Office) has been down since Thursday, February 9, and the department says its Information Technology (IT) Department has been working around the clock to restore services as soon as possible.
Asked about the closure during the live Council of Ministers press briefing on Wednesday, Finance Minister Ardwell Irion acknowledged the closure. “The Tax Office was down for about a week and yes, there was a notice, so it wasn’t as if everyone was mute. There was a notice on their page ... And that was due to a migration process. The systems that we have in the government now, which this government is trying to update and bring up to standard, are legacy systems. The issue was that Microsoft had a security update and it was not updated properly on a 2003 server – an outdated server – so instead of rolling back the servers, we decided now we are going to move forward and put everything on new servers and update the servers so that we can have the proper security update,” Irion explained.
He said the country has IT professionals on the island whom he respects. “The process has now been finalised. We have gotten an update this morning [Wednesday morning – Ed.] that the process has been finalised and if there are one or two persons that haven’t been fully migrated, they will be handled between today and tomorrow [Wednesday and Thursday].”
In the meantime, the Tax Administration said in a notice posted on its website on February 13, and on government’s Facebook Page on Wednesday, February 22, that a follow-up notice will be sent to advise the public once the system is operating. The Department said its offices remain open to the public Mondays to Fridays from 8:00am to 2:00pm and indicated that further requests can be made via
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
