Self assessment on line AAAARRRGGGHHH!!

vet8

Excuse me I just have to have a rant about the bl***y useless self assessment on line service. Yesterday I spent 2 hours screaming at the computer.:eek:

I have never seen such a uselss web site, as I told the man at the help desk, if you were a private firm you would go bust. First, several times it kept telling me that the service was unavailable when I was half way through, and every time I went back to the page I was working on it had lost all the information. Then when I had finally finished after ages, as it took forever for each page to open, I opened up the separate window where you can print out your copy. I closed the window and it totally closed the internet link!

I had to log in and re-log in about 5 times in all.

When finally I had finished and it tried to submit it, it got stuck and said I was 95% of the way through, but had not finished. It is still stuck there 24 hours later. I phoned the help desk and all they could say was try again on Monday. AARRGGGHH!! :mad:

I have spent about 10 times as long doing this online as I did doing my husband's paper tax return. I know which one I will use next year.

cosyc

I wonder if as the old deadline date was 30 Sept alot of people are filing and overloading the system as they think old date still applies???

vet8

I just had to post on here again before I explode.:mad: :mad: :mad:

I have now tried for a week to get this self assessment form through to HMRC, still nothing, still stuck on the same page. So at last I had to phone the help desk again. On the second attempt (on the first they were fully engaged and cut me off!) I spoke to a guy who was helpful - great.

I was on the phone for half an hour and we went through everything on my computer. He reckons it is the fault of my computer which is about 6 months old. He had me changing settings, erasing stuff and fiddling with things. He wanted me to turn off the password remembering thing, HMRC do not like it apparently - no chance. You need dozens of passwords to do anything on the internet these days. When he said I needed to change my browser away from Google I finally snapped and said "Enough!!" I had already changed so many things that my husband was not at all amused when he came home. Needless to say it still does not work.

I cannot honestly believe that to send in my tax return I have to totally reconfigure my PC, especially as I access banks, credit cards, shops etc. etc. without any trouble. And the Tax Return advert which I have seen says how easy it is to file online. What a laugh.:rotfl:

The guy is suposed to phone me back and has not of course, I still cannot send my return - any ideas anyone? I would send a paper return, but I do not have one.

fluffymuffy

Oh dear.

I've looked at it - but you confirm my worst fears. I'm going to carry on filling in my paper forms and photocopying them on my fax machine until they withdraw that option. Then I'll have to get an accountant to submit online for me if there's no other way.

You can get forms here - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sa/forms/content.htm

Babu

I had problems as well when filing online. I had been using Internet Explorer 8 Beta. I then used Firefox and all was OK.

Pennywise

The HMRC online filing system simply isn't fit for purpose. It never has been and I doubt whether it ever will be. We're an accountancy practice and have lost hundreds of man-hours in faffing about with it over the years. The sheer number of errors and system failures is truly mind boggling. If only they'd have an up to date "status" indicator on their website, I'm sure it would be far better - if people knew what the problems were, they wouldn't waste time trying to do what is actually impossible at that time.

Trouble is that even the telephone support people don't know what is and what isn't working, so they'll have you jumping through the hoops messing about with your settings all to no avail because the system is down anyway! There are plenty of "features" that appear available but which just don't work - some have never worked yet still appear on their website!

We gave up and bought in proper software made by a proper firm of computer programmers where we enter all the data onto the bought in system and it gets electronically filed "by the back door" straight through the Government Gateway rather than through the HMRC's own "front end" which has to be said is completely hopeless.

The fact is that it probably wasn't your computer at fault and you may well have messed up other programs that did work by changing your settings. The last straw for us was when we were constantly getting error messages for corporation tax returns which we knew were right - after several weeks of messing about, generally wasting our valuable time and talking to lots of different support staff, they finally admitted that there was a problem in certain circumstances with rounding and that the system was picking up a difference of a fraction of a penny that was stopping their verification checks and therefore rejecting the returns!

I'm also amazed at just how much time the system is down for scheduled maintenance. It's not just for the odd hour or two, sometimes it is down for whole days, if not more. I want to know how ebay and amazon manage to update their websites without shutting them down completely, yet the supposed professionals doing the HMRC website can't manage it!

System

vet8 wrote: »

I would send a paper return, but I do not have one.

Print the form and supplementary pages from their website here - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sa/forms/net-07-08.htm

vet8

Thank you very much for your replies.

I have now printed off a form and I will send that in the post, the good old fashioned way which works. I have so far found that changing the setting has screwed up several things on the computer - typical!! I have never trusted the Inland Revenue.

Thanks very much Pennywise for an excellent informative post.:T

System

vet8 wrote: »

Thank you very much for your replies.

I have now printed off a form and I will send that in the post, the good old fashioned way which works. I have so far found that changing the setting has screwed up several things on the computer - typical!! I have never trusted the Inland Revenue.

Thanks very much Pennywise for an excellent informative post.:T

Can I please recommend you post it off by recorded delivery that way you are sure it has been received and not lost in the post.

withabix

I've filed online every year for the last 6 years or so.

Never had any problems whatsoever.

Did mine as soon as I got all the information (which should be July).

swanny65

withabix wrote: »

I've filed online every year for the last 6 years or so.

Never had any problems whatsoever.

Did mine as soon as I got all the information (which should be July).

Likewise and I use Firefox.