Online tax return 2008-2009 RANT

PhylPho

The January 31 deadline again approaches for online returns. When the Revenue first set up its electronic system it was worse than useless but improved as time went by. Then last year it was revamped and this year seems to have been further refined.

If like me you are retired but not of State pension age, and don't have any income other than private pensions and building society interest, filling in the online form should be a breeze. But it isn't.

Use the Revenue's 'worksheets' to tot up your gross income per pension and tax paid per pension, and it falls apart if one of those pensions happens to be paid tax-free. (The tax take is made from two other, smaller pensions.) Enter the gross figure into the required box and then, for tax paid: £0.00, and the online form has a fit.

Forget the "helpful" work sheets then. Because they don't work.
Instead, follow the instructions to enter into a single box the name of the pension provider, the amount paid (it doesn't say 'gross', you have to figure that out yourself) and the tax paid. So you write:

Old Beggars Pension Fund: £5,400.35p gross
Tax paid: £1,020.74p

And then add however many other pension providers you deal with to the list and the amounts involved.

ERROR ERROR screams the page. Because you've used the keyboard enter key to paragraph out the entries.

You can't see where the para marks are because no coding is visible so getting rid isn't as easy as it may sound. But you manage it and click on 'next' and ERROR ERROR screams the page because you've inadvertently used the colon sign to distinguish one provider from another.

Of course, before actually filling in the damn box, the Revenue could have provided an illustrative pop-up. Or could have said don't insert paragraphs, don't insert colons. But no, that kind of customer care is beyond the Inland Revenue's ken.


At the end of the laborious process, there's an opportunity to save or print your return details in .pdf form. But no facility to right click and 'save target as': the whole thing has to be sent line by line and page by page, because Inland Revenue IT hasn't a clue how to arrange things otherwise.

The server falls over long before it's reached the end of your download. You're better off taking screen shots of everything you've done.

Finally, finally, it's submission time, and today, as last year, and the year before, tc I have completed everything to the Revenue's satisfaction (because it says so, at the end of the returns process) but it doesn't actually have the return because its submission system has "a problem" or is "experiencing difficulties" or "your return has been saved, if you do not wish to wait please log off', which might just as well say, please bog off, because no matter how long you wait, the submission still doesn't go through.

My only reason for posting here is that I see Mr Lewis on TV from time to time. Perhaps if he attempted to use the online tax return self assessment service rather than an accountant he'd appreciate how lousy it truly is.

Presumably it's the tax we all pay which funds the Revenue's IT Masterminds as well as Moira Stewart sitting in a cupboard spouting rubbish about how wonderful the service truly is in all those expensive TV commercials.

What a waste of money all round.

The next letter I get from the Revenue will be returned to them saying ERROR ERROR you've been using paragraphs when you're not allowed to, please sort this out first before any further submission to this address.