Anyone else having to trouble using self assessment today?

squoog

Finally made it with 30 mins to spare.
Have made a promise to myself to get my books more organised this year and try and do my next return in April...
trouble is its like giving birth, once you are over the pain you forget how bad it is!

Johnny_Chaos

Thanks goodness I wasn't the only one having trouble with online self-assessment yesterday. I tried continually from about midday till 10p.m. and couldn't get logged on - nor could I get through to their helpline. The helpline appeared to have no queuing system, a recorded message coldly told me they were busy (surprise, surprise) and the terminated the call.

I have taken screenshots of the error messages so that I can challenge them if they try to charge me a 100 quid.

OK, OK, so I shouldn't have left it till the last minute, but I obviously wasn't the only slacker.

I seem to remember last year there was grace period of a day or two after the deadline for similar reasons.

KennyVader

The new site this year was terrible, wish they would bring the old one back!

horseykitty

Accountants have submitted return and I have paid - phew ! Now I have to save up for dreaded July. Instead of paying Moria Stuart for those annoying 'reminder' adverts they should have used the money to pay extra people to answer the phones in the run-up to the deadline, rather than having a recording telling you to hang up.

Last year my hubby paid my tax owing using his reference number - we only found out when they sent him a rebate - they hadn't even noticed that I hadn't paid and this was months later. Still think it was mean that they charged me £12 interest for what was a genuine mistake.

Once again I've promised myself that I will start this year's returns straight away - but I know it will be the 31st Jan as usual .

Still it's done and piad :j

System

horseykitty wrote: »

Last year my hubby paid my tax owing using his reference number - we only found out when they sent him a rebate - they hadn't even noticed that I hadn't paid and this was months later. Still think it was mean that they charged me £12 interest for what was a genuine mistake.

Since you are taxed as completely separate individuals they would have had no reason whatsoever to check your account. In fact it's highly unlikely that the person processing your husbands return or payment would have known you existed.

I think taxpayers assume that the person working the tax returns and payments has the luxury of time to go searching for clues when mistakes are made. They don't. The government thought it was a good idea to apply "Time and Motion" techniques to clerical work and so abolish whole case working in favour of teams doing parts of jobs and with set targets. It's called Lean and was supposed to help them get rid of staff. That's why the onus is being forcefully pushed onto the taxpayer to educate themselves, take responsibility for their tax affairs and do everything online or over the phone. It obviously isn't working :rolleyes: .
It's now very much a process now, fix later system.