I really am waiting for a story about how the government has become concerned that the country is experiencing repeated darkness between 4:30pm and 6:30 am, and needs to set up a public consultation to proposed the already-adopted solution.

<puts leg up on imaginary stack of DVDs>

hmmmm .... e-returns ... let me think ... now why don't we do them ? ....

Does Paris Hilton file online tax returns ?

Couldn't we just burn them onto disc and post them?

ba-dum, pssh!

The main problem with the Online filing is they send you a ridiculous username and password on multiple letters, - which they will not resend easily and you cannot change your login easily or your password meaning that its easier to fill in the form and do it that way.

Having posted a good artricle about falling standards of journalism you just repeat a press release:

"Online filing can also save a typical business £20 on each company tax return and £5 on every VAT return, as well as reducing the rate of error"

OK, the cash amounts are good, but I'm not sure you can argue that it reduces errors. My accountant uses an accountancy system that prints the forms for you. I believe this is pretty common practice. So there's no less chance of error with the same system submitting on-line. In fact there may be more chance of error as it probably won't be compatible so there'll be room for copy paste errors.

Secondly, shouldn't we question the assumption that submitting on-line saves money. Espcially considering the government's track record on IT projects.

OK, I feel better now!

I think we should use the online filling

My paper tax returns keep getting lost in the post!

(OK its not as good as Steves joke)

On a serious note, maybe people aren't using the online system because it is rubbish.

The .gov system is hard to use, not intuitive and I had a laugh yesterday when a woman from the VAT office was trying to guide me to download a form and I realised that because I was using Firefox the layout completely was different.

So, 9m a year saved for 10 years = £90m saved (possibly, if take up is actually any good, presumably). Cost of online service improvement, £340m. Is it just me, or is that rather poor return on investment?

Then again, I shouldn't be surprised, with this government's record of throwing huge sums of my money down the drain...

Andrew

... and it was very bodgy, there was some kind of PDF template I had to download and fill in. Whenever I got it the end, it would not let me submit it due to "missing fields". After lengthy dialog with their "support" (a bored, non-technically literate lady, who didn't know what a PDF was)... we concluded it was best if I submitted it via the post as normal.

Hmmm....

I've registered for online VAT payments.

My login ID (which won't auto store in Firefox) is LUZPKSQTF93N (BTW I've changed a couple of the characters :-P )

Now which part of "User Friendly" don't they understand?

I helped out with some user experience testing a while ago on a certain government agency's online returns system. I know for a fact that they themselves commissioned the research and were present when I gave the feedback. I know for a fact that I was part of a unanimous call for the approach they had taken to be scrapped. And having tried to fill the form in for real a little while ago, I know for a fact that they changed absolutely NOTHING when they went live. I would count myself as a fairly sophisticated user of Internet services ... I've been writing active web sites since the days when if you wanted a web browser you had to compile mosaic for yourself .. but am still forced to send this one in on paper by the stunningly obtuse interface they came up with.

So they spent a deal of money to find out what the general business public thought of their system and when we came back and told them it was completely pants they decided they knew best after all, binned the criticism and carried on regardless.

It's this sort of arrogant disregard for their own "Customers" that has got them all to the point where we're all tapping out this vitriol about them.

I have to say I have only just stopped laughing about the previous comment concerning having a single logon for all government dues ... Sorry .. That's so monumentally unlikely it's just funny.

There's way more of us than there is of you, our convenience is more important than yours, because our inconvenience costs the economy more if nothing else.

Andy M