Strange letter-writing exchange with threatening tax tribe

WRITTEN ON December 7th, 2004 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Across the Board, Design: Co-creation, What do we want?

This man Simon Moores describes a strange encounter.

He wrote six times to the tribe of tax gatherers. They wanted him to write to them, but they then wrote back to fine him for not writing to them. This is bizarre.

Moores says the tribe is overloaded and ineffectual, and that it’s systems don’t work. He goes on to say

It’s all very well spending billions of taxpayers pounds on a computer system which can only lose data and send out fines, but the Revenue now appear to be acting in the best example of Westminster Council traffic wardens in a kind of shoot first, ask questions later approach to tax collection.

When, I wonder, will we see any central government system that works in the best interest of the taxpayer? The acid remarks of the Public Accounts Committee are proof of this. What about Family Tax Credits, No. the National Assessment Agency, No.

I’m racking my brains to find a single example of something really big in central government IT that works properly and efficiently, anything and I’m stuck, I can’t think of one.

Blimey. And he’s in the trade.

It can’t be as bad as that. Let’s stay balanced and scientific. I think he’s exaggerating about the shootings and deportations. And there must be big e-enabled systems in government that work. Help anyone?

3 Responses to “Strange letter-writing exchange with threatening tax tribe”

 
Richard Sheppard wrote on December 7th, 2004 10:52 pm :

Sadly his web site:

http://www.zentelligence.com/

seems not to like my Firefox 1.0 browser.

W wrote on December 7th, 2004 10:57 pm :

Hm, yes. It’s off topic but the back end of this site doesnt like Firefox either – there’s a bug that affects screen width which clears when you reload, which is a pain. I had to switch back to Mozilla.

Simon Moores wrote on December 8th, 2004 12:26 am :

How about the Inland Revenue saying “We’re sorry, we cocked-up and we had no right to send you a fine because we were too lazy, incompetent or bored to process the six P11’s you sent us earlier this year, so we thought we’d try it on and see if we could squeeze a little more money from you in the shape of an unwarrented fine, because as you know, Gordon Brown has a Black Hole to fill and you look as if you have a few bob to spare for a good election cause!”