back to article Engaged to be worried – Verify borks married tax allowance applications

Recipients of UK.gov's flagship marriage tax allowances have been left unable to identify themselves online, the latest stumbling block in the government's new gaffe-prone identity assurance system Verify. According to the Daily Mail, many applicants were left confused and unable to identify themselves. Labour MP Margaret …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I Can't Verify!

    so HMRC will provide a phone number!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I Can't Verify!

      and i'm sure, sure I tell you, that HMRC will be answering that phone 24x7, same as online should be, and at no cost to you (it'll be a free-to-caller number, regardless of call origin) other than line rental, and it'll only take the same number of minutes from start to finish as the online process should be - no call on hold or anything like that - or HMRC will reimburse you for your time, at the same hourly rate they pay their QCs (after all, they're a public service, you're the public, Can't have any of them being a silly amount that they're not prepared to pay out themselves, can we?)

      Wait, have I been smoking the neighbour's "specials" again?

  2. joewilliamsebs

    Yup. We tried to apply a few weeks ago - my wife had to identify herself to the Verify service, as she is the one sacrificing some of her allowance.

    Using the Experian service, she was given a multiple-choice question for "a payment made onto your credit card xxxx in the last 3 months". None of the numbers matched any of the payments she'd made...

    I eventually worked out that it meant the total of all payments made to the card over a given billing month, which took bloody hours to work out.

  3. SniperPenguin
    Coat

    Not sure what the fuss is about

    "According to the Daily Mail, many applicants were left confused and unable to identify themselves"

    Doesn't that generally describe most Daily Mail readers?

    1. Disko
      Thumb Up

      Re: Not sure what the fuss is about

      i guess in the mirror they can not identify themselves either

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not sure what the fuss is about

      Try the calculator: https://www.gov.uk/marriage-allowance

      Being eligible means that you somehow manage to survive with your wife _NOT_ working and you yourself _NOT_ being a higher rate taxpayer. Theoretically possible, but practically not achievable anywhere south of the Peterborough.

      I guess me and my SWMBO should go back to our primary function of financing the band of xenophobic and clueless humanitarian graduates infesting the Thames waterfront to the tune of 60k+ a year. As we do now. Oh forgot, we supposedly came here to "steal benefits" too.

  4. Christoph
    WTF?

    "The high failure rate may have been due to a mismatch in information arising from a change of address and name"

    " No-one will miss out on the Marriage Allowance because of difficulties with online verification."

    Err ... does this mean that there are problems with sorting out Marriage Allowance if people have recently changed their name?

  5. johnB

    HMRC Telephone

    I can only hope the poor sods that have to use the telephone won't have to wait the 50 mins it took HMRC to answer my call last week.

  6. viscount
    Megaphone

    Won't SOMEONE think of the hard-working families?

  7. BongoJoe

    I tried to verify myself the other week. My passport has expired but I still have a driving licence, council tax bills, utility bills and the like.

    The first question: Do you have a valid UK passport.

    No.

    It then tells me that I am restricted to using only one of the verification agencies in their list and would I like to continue? I would and I did.

    So I filled in pages of answers and then when I got to the last page where I was asked to fill in my passport details I came to a grinding halt as it seems that I really need to have both a passport and a driving licence.

    I wrote to HRMC about this and then, weeks later, I got some bullshit response which made little sense to me at all. Needless to say that they didn't promise to rectify the issue.

    1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

      An expired UK passport is still a valid /identity/ document, it just isn't a valid /travel/ document. Even branches of the Home Office fail to grasp this simple fact, and I have had to wave a Home Office circular at them to get them to understand their own rules.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The problem with being re-elected...

    ...it makes it rather harder to blame shitty decisions on the previous administration. So (seeing as there's little hope of it working well enough any time soon) I'd like to volunteer MongoCorp as the official provider of scapegoat solutions. All the govt need do is appoint us to the project, pay our exorbitant fee, spend a week practising histrionic pulling of hair and rending of garments, then loudly discover that we've wrecked the otherwise excellent project.

    Oh, please don't use "Verify" when processing the MongoCorp invoice: we're scapegoats, not sacrificial lambs...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Verify is not provided by HMRC

    It shouldn't be forgotten that whilst everyone is whinging at HMRC they don't provide the Verify service at all. It's provided by GDS (Government Digital Services) which doesn't have a good track record at delivering projects. Verify has already caused some major issues with Rural Payments, long before it was causing headaches for HMRC.

    1. Richard Taylor 2

      Re: Verify is not provided by HMRC

      It should not be forgotten - but also not forgiven

  10. Juan Inamillion

    I'm sure I'm missing something...

    Look, I understand that we all make mistakes. I also understand they're dealing with millions of people with varying degrees of web competence and requirements. But - and please don't flame me for possible ignorance - if the likes of Google, Amazon, ebay and Paypal can preserve logins, account details, editing and the like for MEELIONS of users, why can't the developers of HMRC's site do the same?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Errr

    I'm sure the UK Government Digital Services assisted the Estonians in their digital ID...to be completely ignored.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Errr

      whereas GDS should have hired the Estonians to do it, or better still, outsource GDS itself, if necessary over the dead bodies of the mandarins and the usual leeches suspects and get the job done by people with hand-on experience and a healthy allergy to paper

  12. David Roberts
    FAIL

    Verify?

    You lucky, lucky bastards.

    When my wife tried to transfer some tax allowance a few weeks back all she got was a request to submit an email address so she could be contacted later.

    Still waiting.........

  13. x 7

    "an online footprint"

    I forsee a lot of broken scanners......

    to be honest I didn't think the average scanner would be accurate enough to scan skin patterns. But if it is, why a foot? Why not something simpler like a hand? Or just a thumbprint?

    1. pixelgeek

      Really? Have you seen what you can get out of a couple of hundred dpi?

  14. pixelgeek
    Big Brother

    Dissapointed

    Quite honestly, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Terry Gilliams movie Brazil yet. There are multiple scenes perfect for accompaniment with this article...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU (watch till the end)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGeT5cutXgU

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay0TDQuq7XI

    New anti Terrorism powers make the last one particularly relevant to more than just this article

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I know this will be unpopular, but...

    Why do we have a tax break for married couples?

    This is just government messing around with social engineering and they shouldn't be doing it.

    Why should I be financially penalised for being single?

    1. Martin Taylor 1

      Re: I know this will be unpopular, but...

      Because they operate - at least in an ideal world - as a single economic unit.

      My wife is long-term sick, and cannot work. Why should she be forced to waste the unused part of her tax allowance, when I am supporting her?

      Perhaps you're too young to remember the days when couples actually had a choice, to have their allowances treated separately or jointly. This was done away with on the excuse (I guess) of encouraging women to be financially independent of their husbands. As usual, the law of unintended consequences applies.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I know this will be unpopular, but...

        "Because they operate - at least in an ideal world - as a single economic unit."

        We do not live in an ideal world/

        "My wife is long-term sick, and cannot work. Why should she be forced to waste the unused part of her tax allowance, when I am supporting her?"

        Long term sickness is unfortunate, and I really do care about the state providing for those who need support and I wish you and your wife the best.

        I'm just a little more cynical about the state supporting those who have married and treating that as a justification for financial benefit.

        "Perhaps you're too young to remember the days when couples actually had a choice, to have their allowances treated separately or jointly"

        I am 55, would you like to tell me if I'm too young to remember, or to ignorant to have at some point have read up when couples had a choice.

    2. J.G.Harston Silver badge

      Re: I know this will be unpopular, but...

      If they want people to be able to give away unused portions of their tax allowances, they should allow it for anybody, then I could give my unused allowances to my nephew.

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