HMRC self-assessment online gets awards nod UK taxpayers will have been spluttering into their keyboards today to see HMRC's self-assesment website praised to the skies by the judges of an e-government awards ceremony. Gov tech website Publictechnology.net has recently been running case studies on the finalists in its e-government National Awards, which were handed out …
Online tax system 'too risky' for the famous (and mps, and royalty)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/26/ntax126.xml
You've already mentioned that it crashed on the biggest day of the year.
who's kidding who on this being a success?
- Joel
It's obviously not specced high enough to cope with hundred of thousands of users who can't be arsed to get their return in before deadline day, and it has an arcane registration process, but.... it's actually a pretty good service, and makes a good attempt at guiding 'civilians' through the labrynthine tax forms.
So much better than the paper forms. I really think it is an excellent service. It makes the whole painful experience a lot easier - isn't that what technology should be for?
My only complaint is they don't have all the forms on it yet. You can't do your overseas earnings. It directs you to a long list of 3rd party software you have to pay for to do this. Why they are special I've no idea. I printed the paper PDFs for overseas earnings, filled it in, scanned it and attached it to the main online forms. I hope this is OK.
PS Leaving it until the last day of January is a bit dumb.
I've filed my SA electronically for the last 3 or 4 years but I don't use the website ... instead I've spent £20 on taxcalc so I can sort out everything offline on a PC, check all the details and see the results and then only when I'm happy does it log into the whatever.gov.uk and sends the data. I never go anywhere near the SA website!
I wonder if they count this as "online filing"
I'm afraid I was totally unsurprised when the site went down on deadline day. Any student who's had to submit a computing assignment knows that the chance of the system being down the night before the deadline (and that the terminal room will be packed) is close to 100%. So do it a few days in advance.
I never manage to get thru my wife's Sole Trader SA without calling HMRC's Helpdesk at least once. Several points came to light over the years.
- HMRC will not issue you a paper statement to confirm the end of tax year settlement if you file online. They will if you file your Self Assessment on paper. Without this form to give to the Student Finance Office we're obliged to fill in another thick sheaf of (paper only) forms to Student Finance for our son's student loan assessment.
- The online filing system cannot cope with a loss carried forward calculation and cannot store the to-carry forward loss for next year. Have to write it on a bit of paper and file that. Funnily enough the Helpdesk people CAN access this info from their system.
When I point out any glaring issue with this online form, the Helpdesk people agree with me and shrug it off with "well that's just the way it is". Without these folks' help the online system would be unfeasible for me and I wonder how many others.
To>".. not really, if you want to maximse the interest earned on your dosh before ponying up to HMRC."
Filing date and payment are NOT connected
Regardless of when you file your payment is not due until 31 Jan
In fact filing early has other benefits as from next year the enquiry window will run from when you file as opposed to from the end of tax year as at present. So you can breathe easier earlier
to >Made my life easier
Sorry yours is not a valid return, you can't add additional "non supported" pages as an attachment ( check out their FAQs), the numbers on the attachment won't be reflected in the tax calculation
Thumbs up because online filing has made my life a lot easier
Bad that it crashed, but unwise to leave things so late (and as somebody said, you can file now and pay later)
Doesn't do capital gains and various other things, but what it does do, it now does well. I have taken time to make comments and I notice most have been adopted over the years. No doubt others also commented, but it is nice to know somebody has taken the issues on board.
If you can't deal with a late surge in traffic just before the deadline - which is inevitable to anyone who isn't an unemployable moron who has to have their job subsidised by the taxpayer - then issue staggered deadlines. People with names ending in A-F have to file by one date, G-M the next day, etc. etc.
If the government doesn't get sufficient capacity or come up with a way to deal with it, it is entirely their fault. One hundred per cent. Not one iota of blame attaches to the people who attempted to file on the deadline. If you tell someone that they may do something by date x, then they are perfectly at liberty to do it on date x. Pissng and moaning "oh they should have done it at random times like our predicted usage graph drawn in crayon said they would, because it's not as if people have anything better to do than administrate our own protection racket" does not change their mistake.
I've used the website to file for the last few years and it's been fine. Testing a system like that to make sure it'll cope must be a nightmare, especially in the public sector where there's so much pressure to cut costs("if you did it for 4p last year, why do you need £10million this year?").
When the website got too busy it degraded very nicely, with static pages explaining what was happening. It was all a lot more slick then, say, the Glastonbury Festival debacle last year. The self-assessment website is generally a lot better than most of the corporate websites I have encountered.
I file online, and it's not too bad - well not too bad in terms of having anything to do with our horrendously complex tax system that is !
However, as someone has said, it doesn't carry forward data from last year.
It doesn't carry forward ANYTHING from last year - so I have to type in my employers details again.
It won't allow me to leave the extra address line nlank even though I don't have enough lines in my address to fill it.
And just for good measure, every year, I get a letter back telling me that they've adjusted my return for some reason or another. Right now I've just NO idea how they've come up with my latest PAYE coding !
Oh yes, and it took a bit of time getting online on the 30th to pay the small amount of tax I had due - even I figured out that the 31st might be a tad busy !
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