MYOB tax table exploitation
The budget comes and goes each year, and we are used to small tax changes, at least in recent years. For all businesses this means that there will be changes to the tax deducted from employees wages. A lot of businesses use MYOB and other accounting packages to do this.
And then, a close to the 30th of June a fax comes from MYOB, suggesting you need to buy the new version in order to get the tax table changes. And that is over $300 for a whole new version of the software or sign up to quite expensive support that in the past has been quite useless. This feels like exploitation when the tax changes are small — a few numbers changed in the tax tables. And the tax table is in a file in the application folder (on MYOB AccountEdge it is, anyway)
Over $300 to update a table? I think not. That’s exploiting small business. Come on MYOB, just distribute the tax table change for free. That would be fair and reasonable.
Or somebody else will probably update the tax table and make it a free download. Anybody want to do it?
56 Comments to MYOB tax table exploitation
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I remember many years ago, I was earning spot on the level where I should pay
almost no tax - $5200/year, and the tax-free limit was $5000 I think.
So, from my own PAYE calculation, I should have been paying the tax on $200,
spread over 52 weeks - something like .50c/week. BUT, according to their
PAYE table, I should have been paying $8.50/week. From what I could see,
the entire table was skewed by 8 or 9 dollars. No big deal, and not many
people would notice, but still - how hard is it to get something so simple
right? Or, was it a plan to get a pretty sizeable interest-free loan
out of the tax-paying public???
So, before you fork over any money for that table, check the figures!
Yes Graeme I agree wholeheartedly! Fancy I was just belatedly wanting to do some accounts and my google search comes up with your blog as the number one hit - how do you do it?
MMM cant help with the technical fix though - I’ll be saving a boring manual calculation in my recurring entries saw another article on this at http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/09/1092022394454.html?oneclick=true. I recall that in my youth I used to be able to change myobs tax tables manually in the prefs, oh well.
Hope you are going well
Cheers
Heidi
I’ll give it a go! - but the chances are they’ll cotton on to it and make it harder next time.
Just edited / updated my first MYOB tax table! I’ll write an editor to make the job easy for the average user. Give me a week or two and I’ll post a link for diy_myob_table.exe
Go Maxwell! Looks forward to seeing what you come up with.
About a third of the way there - I’ll test it for ver 13 acc plus & 14 platinum - maybe ready in time for Chrissy..
Maxwell, how are you going with the diy_myob_table.exe? The next financial year is coming, hurry. Would you like to share which file you are editing, and how?
Again MYOB ask for a renewal of MYOB support at the end of a year where I have made no support calls or received a software upgrade since the June 30 tax table of 2004. (I use AccounteEdge 4 Mac)
This is a rip off. Tonight I rang the MYOB support line to see when the new tax tables will be released. They hope by the end of June but they can’t be sure.
Apparently there is a new release of AccountEdge coming which includes the Tax Tables. It had better have something else in it to make it worth $300.
I reckon if you want to get onto the MYOB support cycle which entitles you to software upgrades and free tax tables for a year, wait until after June 30 so you get the TT’s for 2 years, (2005 and 2006), then don’t renew in 2006. Wait till July 2007 and so on.
If you are using Premier it may be worth renewing every year but the software upgrades between version are NOT worth $300 or so for AccountEdge. Very minor tweaks indeed.
I’d love to be able to create my own Tax Tables and not upgrade at all unless drastic changes occur to the taxation system.
Did anybody get diy_myob_table.exe to work and if so where can I get a copy.
Regards
Yeah, that’ll be a great help since I noticed the rates are change considerably due to the new tax cut. I really appreciate a copy of diy myob.
Here is my last message sent to Myob sales office. I did not get answer.
Following a telephone conversation with one of your sales representative, I would like to let you know that I am not ready to sign up to the Myob cover. Since I am an MYOB customer, around 10 years, I have never used the advantage that you are offering with the cover. The trouble is that in the past Myob use to provide the updated tax tables via download or for a small amount. Today Myob is forcing customers to upgrade or to sign up for a cover costing a lot of money just to get the new Tax table. I wonder what the ACCC would think of such business practice, especially when some customers never used any support and only require a simple update that is only a small file provided to you free of charge by the ATO.
I have knowledge of several of your customers that have the same opinion regarding Myob’ business practices in that regard.
So I will wait for now, until I find a better deal. By the way, I had a look on your site and the MYOB Accounting Plus v15 Upgrade is sold for $309.00. That is about $60.00 more than what you can find elsewhere. This illustrates clearly what is Myob guiding principle.
guys, I have located the file name for the tax table. I have Myob v14 and it is c:myob/pay2myob.bin
If you open it in notepad you can see how cryptic it is, maybe try and obtain the file from a student trial version $10???
once the file is replaced u should just be able to go setup>upload table???
I’m not paying $300 for a tax table!!
It appears you cannot mix different versions of the tax table, In v15 I couldn’t even see any sort of text or numbers. However by opening the pay2myob.bin file in notepad or excel you can actually edit the numbers. Identifing the differrent categories is the hard part. Myob actually uses the numbers staight from ato. I am in the process of matching the old numbers, so I can key in the new numbers. If you are a small business you may only use a few categories so it should be relatively easy. When I work out some more I will post updates. Although the easy way is to find someone who can give you a copy of the updated file (but that would breech copy-write)
I have tried to download the test drive version , but the tax table is still November 2004…
OK, so you find the pay2myob.bin file. Open it in notepad
(excel may be good to break it up a bit and keying in so a you can see what you are doing) it is really cryptic
I done some of the hard work. MYOB breaks up tax categories with its
own unique code. If you look up ATO tax formulaes you can see
that MYOB has copied exactly the percentages and coeffecients!!!
I done the hard work of decoding this mess!
now all that has to be done is to key in the new tax formulaes and numbers,
Schedule 1A,21A,14A,16A from http://www.ato.gov.au is mostly everything.
you’ll find that hecs debt and fs debt makes everything complex.
to save yourself data entry work leave the codes as is if you never use them.
The ones I can’t work out would be shearers, seniors and horticulturists???
make sure you backup your old file before replacing it with the new numbers.
be very carefull to change only the numbers. From what I can see MYOB doesnt use any tabs
or commas to seperate numbers
it is expecting a fixed number of digit make sure insert mode is off (overtype)
the 999999999.99 just means the skys the limit, I’d like to earn that much in a week!
PAYEWA No tax freethreshold
PAYEWB tax free threshold and LL
PAYEWC Foreign resident
PAYEWD no tfn resident
PAYEWE no tfn non resident
PAYEWF full medicare exemption
PAYEWG half medicare exemption
PAYEWH tax free threshold and no LL
PAYEWI no tax free threshold and hecs debt
PAYEWJ tax free threshold and LL and hecs
PAYEWK foreign resident with hecs
PAYEWL full medicare exemption and hecs debt
PAYEWM half medicare exemption with hecs debt
PAYEWN no LL and hecs debt
PAYEWO an even 13%tax???
PAYEWP an even 29% tax???
PAYEWQ ????
PAYEWR no tax free threshold and hecs and fs debt
PAYEWS tax free thrshold and LL and fs debt
PAYEWT tax free threshold and LL and hecs and fs debt
PAYEWU Foreign resident with fs debt
PAYEWV foreign resident with fs and hecs debt
PAYEWW full medicare exemption and fs debt
PAYEWX full medicare exemption and fs debt and hecs debt
PAYEWY half medicare and fsdebt
PAYEWZ half medicare and fs debt and hecs debt
PAYEW[ tax free threshold no LL and fs debt
PAYEW tax free threshold no LL and fs debt and hecs debt
PAYEW] ?
PAYEW^ ?
PAYEW_ ?
PAYEW` an even 13%tax???
PAYEWa an even 29% tax???
Have fun, can someone give details of where to get the full revised file!!
Oh, don’t forget to save as pay2myob.bin
I have successfully updated the main categories but hecs and sfss categories will take forever. I popped the file on kazaa which will get most small businesses out of trouble for now.
There is an open source software project called MyTaxTables here,
http://mytaxtables.sourceforge.net
It is only a beta version and only for windows, so check the output carefully.
It allows editing of your existing pay2myob.bin file.
This is brilliant and is easy to use. Well done Thanks Bill
[...] p;
MyTaxTables project generates MYOB tax tables
Ages ago I wrote a post here that whinged about MYOB charging a lot for a new version of the MYOB accountin [...]
Thanks Bill. The open source MyTaxTables software really works.
As a struggling small business owner I can’t affort to pay MYOB $300 for just editing such a simple pay2myob.bin file when I can do it myself.
Not to be the dork who asks for something for nothing, but does anyone have any idea what this file might be for the Mac version? I tried opening the file AccountEdge Tax Tables — but nothing but gibberish so far…
I have shared pay2myob.bin (v15) on the edonkey network. Interesting that mytt won’t open it….
Search on Pay2Myob AUST MYOB 15
Hi Everyone,
I share your feeling, MYOB is too much. Thanks Bill.
Hi, guest what? question marks on johnny’s message are actually related to shearers, horticultural and senior people (not in that order) However this is not really important anymore because, since myob premier v9 release, the pay2myob.bin file has been encrypted. Any ideas? Cheers
Any update on the wonderful little MYOB tool?
I’m a new user (less than 12 months) to accounting plus V15.0.2….. now I really know what the PLUS means, Plus ongoing revenue for MYOB. I’ll be stuffed if I’ll spend 75% of the purchase price every year just to get a table update, can you imagine if Microsoft did that for every service pack release, every Government on the planet would force them to change. The tax table update is way less complicated than say updating all the timezones in XP for instance and yet Microsoft makes these and many more updates (not just fixes) for free. What would happen if they said, sorry you can ONLY get the timezone update if you BUY the product update, IT WOULD NOT HAPPEN and yet MYOB is getting away with it. Further still, if you don’t want to download the FREE update you can still manually change the info. Lets not beat around the bush, this is extortion, I’ve only got 7 months use from the software and I’m already being told I have to spend another $330 in order to continue to use it for the specific purpose that I bought it for, payroll. And the ‘Buyer Protection’ only covers you if you’ve bought the software in the last two months!
Now, as with Premier v9, Plus v15.0.2 also appears to have the pay2myob.bin file encrypted (god forbid MYOB should even let a couple of people out of their net). I spoke with MYOB support and in the course of abusing them I asked if it was possible to manually update the tables, I was told YES, when asked if the information to do this was available, I was told NO because it was too complicated and there was too high a risk of people getting it wrong.
So…. does anyone know how to manually update the tables or have an updated pay2myob.bin file? PLEASE, I refuse to pay these bastards. Hmmm, “PAY TO MYOB (money into the) BIN”. Do we think the name of the file is unfortunate or are they just so arrogant they are shoving it down our throats.
http://mytaxtables.sourceforge.net/
Get the MYTT program which updates the tax files in MYOB
The MYTT program does not work with V15, as the tax tables are encrypted.
True. The relevant V15 file is not accessible. Comes up “unexpected number of data rows”.
Anyone worked out what to do?
There is no way I will give MYOB any of my hard earned money if I can avoid it. If I can get the updated file I will let you all know.
Yes this is something that is really annoying me. Currently trying to crack the tables as i am in the exact same boat as Jason above
I’ve emailed the MYTT guys asking for versions that will work with other MYOB versions. No answer yet.
I use Accountedge 5. I have resorted to renewing the myob cover every 2 years. They normally release an update to the software in July (not just the tax tables). So if you can survive a few weeks, renew the software later in July. Then for 07/08 you can downoad the tax tables at the start of the financial year before your cover runs out……
Not a bad idea. But not as elegant as cracking the file code and updating the tables. :-)
Still, that’ll be my plan B.
Otherwise, I’ll just put them all onto contract status and manualy adjust the remaining office person.
Does anyone want to share the cost of upgrading Premier V9??
THIS APPLIES TO MYOB V13. I hate MYOB (whereas this comment applies in general to MYOB - daylight robbers). Why don’t they charge a small fee for a tax table say $50 to $100 dollars. I’d be prepared to pay for it. But when they want to gouge you for a full supposed upgrage that is really only a tax update… well then can GO AND GET…..
I only changed so that I had an integrated payroll that was familiar to a significant percentage of payroll/admin/bookkeeping type people so there were not training issues for future payroll staff.
I looked at MYTT but I couldn’t add lines. I then opened with MSWord… it looked very unreadable at first but when I dragged the margins in to approx 13 cm all the codes, range values, percentages, and co-efficients lined up as if in a table.
This is a sample of the start of the file MYOB VERSION 13 THIRTEEN 13 THIRTEEN
07/01/03 1 0 114 60 53 53 1 0 292PAYEPAYG
The “07/01/03” is the Tax revision date in MM/DD/YY format. The 292 has something to do with the number of lines of tables. For every line of tax table you add I think you have to add one to this number. When adding lines be careful not to add any paragraph return marks or non-priting characters. AND always backup ORIGINAL in a safe place prior to attempting any changes.
I will NOT be installing MYOB in the future whenever I have a say in it unless thay change their policy on tax table updates. There are plenty of other programs out there.
Not Happy!!
I hope this helps.
I have read with interest the comments on MYOB tax table upgrades.I have had v15 + (expenses) for less than 12 months and will not pay for tables. I am manually adjusting figures on individual payments as I go until I can get a not cost solution to the problem.
It really is bad business practice and highway robbery at the fees that MYOB are demanding to comply and the sneakyness they are employing to hide the tables format so that you can make changes yourself.
Hi Guys, tested it on Accounting Plus V.13, and it works if you follow the manual.
Good luck
Hi Everyone
Great thread - thanks for starting it Graeme!
I am running MYOB AccountEdge v6 which I had to purchase when I switched to an Intel Mac in late 2006 (my old MYOB would not run on this machine and so MYOB told me the only option was to upgrade).
I employed someone on the 1/1/07 and so have been using Payroll for the first time. Today I received the dreaded extortion fax!! $449 for MYOB cover I don’t want and will never use in order to get a tax table upgrade for my single staff member.
I rang the enquiry line and got a nice person in India who told me the other option was just to upgrade my brand new software for $389. I asked why. She said because it is complex programming that has to happen to upgrade the tax tables and it is has to be integrated into the software. Why? Because that is the way they do it.
I then asked to speak to her supervisor and was transferred to another very nice Indian person. Same questions, same responses. I suggested this was extortion, she said that’s the way they do it. I then asked to be transferred to a supervisor in Australia. I am waiting for their call back!
This is simply appalling MYOB! I agree with the suggestion that they should make just the Tax Table file available for say $99 - still a rip but within the ball park of reasonableness and affordability. Paying $389 is daylight robbery.
Is anyone else willing to contribute to getting a developer to write the new MYOB 07/08 Tax Table to then make it available to everyone on the net for say $29?
Just a thought :-)
Cheers
Melinda
Ugh, I got the extortion email the other day (fax is so 90’s) and ignored it because I assumed there would be a way to updatet the tax tables myself. How wrong I was, and upon a search of the net found this post.
Unfortunately MTT doesn’t work with AccountingPlus 1.6 so I think I’m stuck without any option but to pay MYOB their blood money, and I’ve only owned the package for less than 3 months, and now they want another $500? It’s crazy!
Melinda, I’d gladly pay $$ for an app like MTT so I could edit the tables myself (I wish I’d paid more attention in to windows programming now).
I agree with everything that’s been voiced on this thread. Being a Pom I’ve been whingeing … now resorted to insulting … MYOB ever since we first bought it back in 2001. lol. I have lodged a strong complaint against MYOB with the ACCC [maybe if they get enough complaints they might put some pressure on MYOB - so get writing!] I’m frankly amazed some smart tech guy/girl has not made available revised tax tables and made available as a download for a fee. I’d pay and clearly so would most on this thread.
Does anyone know whether the American’s & Brits have to fork out for a total upgrade simply to obtain revised tax tables? Be interesting to see if we’re [Aus] alone in this rip-off annual business practice.
Built using crap technology and getting ripped of to boot…nice work MYOB. Please God bring on the Mac version of Quickbooks for Australia.
I am happy to kick in some money if you can update the Account Edge 6 version…!
I just called MYOB to register a complaint as well and inform them that Quickbooks had a rebate which then made their product about $300 complete with a years support. I asked the rep if they were looking to offer their existing customers some incentive to stay with their product. He quoted me an upgrade only option for about $389 which I would have to wait until September to get the tables. He clearly stated that there was no way MYOB could compete or wishes to compete with Quicken. So my question is now has anyone tried the Quicken MYOB Data Converter and had any success? :)
Loved this thread to try and just do what I need to do with the software I bought!
Does anyone have a screendump or table of the figures I have to put into MYTT for this financial year 2007/08?
I am not an accountant and my head is hurting from trying to work out what numbers go where!
I love the MYTT guys for coming up with a solution, I just wish it wasn’t made for programmers and accountants.
Would love a table for tax free threshold in particular.
“Come on MYOB, just distribute the tax table change for free. That would be fair and reasonable.”
Really? It costs MYOB money to produce those table updates, and a fair proportion of their customers are prepared to pay them for it.
Turn things around a moment: how would you feel if your customers started demanding that you give away your time & thus money to them, because they don’t like paying your fees?
Hey guys
Great! …it works …after hours of surfing the web for a solution to v14, I have finally found it!
You guys rock. …MYOB sucks!
Hi all. It seems I am yet another sufferer of MYOB extortion to “upgrade” for $460.00 to install the latest tax tables. They assure me I need an upgrade to keep “up to date” but I have only just got used to using the current version and don’t want to change. If anyone comes up with an easier way to change the tax tables, count me in.
Duncan:
I am not sure you have any understanding of software development, but considering the ATO tax tables are FREELY available information, all MYOB would be required to do is update a number of variables, and publish a new file.
No change to any code is required, no testing required (one would assume MYOB properly boundary tests all code in the first place before selling you their software), taking a programmer a whole few minutes, lets say an hour after filling in all the internal documentation/paperwork to make a change.
Once per year.
On the other hand consider this:
You USED to be able to change the tax tables manually. They since hid this data in an obfuscated file which would have taken lets say 10-20 hours of programmer time to change/develop/test this ‘improvement’. For NO OTHER REASON than to stop users from manually modifying the tax tables (i.e. not requiring any future involvement from MYOB ltd.) and as such their plans to extort money.
It is nothing but greed.
Simone Aug 7, 2007
I totaly agree with all that has been said above MYOB what a bunch of Knob Jockeys
http://www.ato.gov.au/content/downloads/n3539-05-2007.pdf
Look at page 3 Scale 2 it has the correct info for 07/08 tax.
p.s MYTT works with premier 2003
Hi all, I totaly agree with MYOB being a rip-off.
Totally agree that it is a rip off
I dont agree with MYOB…….
We have to pay a yearly subscription to get the tax tables in the UK too. It also covers calls to their helpdesk which I think I might have used once. It does seem a bit steep to me. They should at least give you the ability to update the table yourself if you wish to.
Can anybody point me to some help on creating manual payslips?
RE: MYOB
To the person managing this site.
Last message on this site is 24/1/08, I believe we need to reactive this site
I am a bookkeeper of the old school and can be of great help to the many people who have left msgs on this site, I would be happy to talk to them and hand on any help they need.
However I am in business as a contract bookkeeper and charge $50 per hour for my services
MYOB is only an accounting tool and can be used to advantage, provided one has not upgraded to far. Well that can be fixed.
I personally have not upgraded my own MYOB files beyond Accounting Plus 12 and Premier 6. These were very stable.
The upgrades beyond those means loss of control of a file, due to all the incredibly awful things they have now included in the program.
I have reasons to believe there may be corruptions in the programs beyond the above mentioned.
Most of the people using this program do not have a clue how to manage it, therein lies the problem.
Regards
Ela, call me - 03 875 0182
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