WRITTEN ON January 29th, 2009 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Save Time and Money, What do we want?
Late as always, I’ve finally searched out my records and completed the online SA Tax form. My tax affairs are reasonably simple but do require lots of small numbers from lots of different documents and sources.
This year, even so close to the deadline, the HMRC website seemed fast and effective. There appeared to be fewer entry boxes on each web page…. (updated 31/01/09)…
As a major improvement this year, the questions now ask for data in the same way that our records are likely to show it: For example, under bank interest, the HMRC now asks only for “net interest” and then calculates the tax & the gross. Previously, the form had asked for two or three of “net interest,” “tax paid,” and “gross interest.”
This change has simplified the form and means less time calculating the missing figures, but obviously has also removed any possibility of checking for errors. So, we must learn to type accurately!
This simplified page layout did trap me: One page asked only about “interest” from banks & unit trusts: This page made no mention of the much more usual “dividend” from unit trusts – that was on the next page.
There were some other minor problems, such as the Gift Aid box not being able to accept the full charity code supplied by the HMRC’s own website. (It wouldn’t accept the final “G”)
I use large fonts, 120DPI and my Firefox has specially modified “chrome.” The HMRC pages did work with these but I became lost a couple of times until I scrolled horizontally & vertically to the bottom right and finally found a “next” button.
I’ve not yet received a comforting acceptance email, but assuming that my return is accepted, the HMRC Personal SA Online Tax Return service seemed to work well this year.
Perhaps HMRC could now include more categories of income? For example, more people – however reluctantly – may now have some “letting income.” Perhaps this HMRC service could handle that?
Update 31 Jan 2009:
There still seems to be a problem with both the HMRC’s email service and their “secure online message” service:
I’ve not yet received an email confirming receipt of my tax return. Also, several of the links on the HMRC web pages which should point to the secure message service actually result in error messages.
29th Jan 2009: I used the HMRC’s secure online message service to ask for confirmation.
30th Jan 2009: Received an email stating that a reply was waiting in my secure inbox – unfortunately, there was no message in my inbox. So, I sent a second message again asking for confirmation.
31st Jan 2009: Still nothing in my secure inbox and no further emails.
Note. I have (at least) two HMRC accounts and two secure inboxes – one for personal tax, one for company affairs. Only the fact that I use different contact email addresses told me which HMRC secure inbox had the waiting message. Many people will have multiple accounts with HMRC.
Wibbi: HMRC should make their email alert messages clearer; they should indicate which account has received a waiting secure message.
Conclusions:
The HMRC’s email and secure message services are either broken or overwhelmed by the final rush.
There seems little point in adding to the HMRC’s workload – and my phone bill – by telephoning their support staff.
3 Responses to “HMRC Online Personal Self-Assessment Tax Service 08/09”
Ditto. Submitted online on the 30th Jan, yet still saying not received and no email message.
Oh, do stop whingeing. The 7-day pin delay is a feature of the Government Gateway and completely out of HMRC’s control. The reason a pin is posted to you is because this provides a measure of security. Would you prefer that the security was not there? I could always log on as you, declare no tax payable and then you’d get the fine. How jolly hilarious that would be.
And why do you want an email confirming receipt when you already get an immediate, on-screen acknowledgment that HMRC has received your return? Do you have trouble writing down a number?
Instead, WIBBI you lot didn’t wait until the last minute before doing your tax return? Why should I, as a taxpayer, fund the employment and training of hundreds of extra temporary call centre workers just because you can’t do your return in a timely manner? Why should I have to pay for vast amounts of computer hardware that sits idle all year because, for *two* days in the year, it is necessary?
You do realise that you don’t have to pay until Jan 31st, irrespective of when you actually submit your return don’t you? There is no reason to leave it late.
I’ll second that – a much easier form, well routed and you can work out what data you need.
A couple of gripes about the holistic user experience. First that in all the adverts they don’t make it clear that if you are a first time user you need a government gateway PIN – which takes up to seven days to appear. [Which was the case for my wife – surely since she hadn’t filed by paper in October, they could have written to her telling her that she needed a PIN. Indeed, why not send one or something so that you don’t have to wait seven days at the critical point???]
Second, if you do have tax to pay, as I did, I don’t suggest you try to pay via the telephone system (as advised by my advisor). I spent nearly an hour constantly ringing only to be told “all our operators are busy, please hang up”. If they can’t gear up to surely the busiest days of the year, surely they can surely tell you aURL to go to.
And my final gripe – why isn’t there a stonking great button on the main page of the HMRC site to say “PAY NOW”? It takes about three clicks to find the place to actually pay.
It all smacks, sadly, of a service designed from the inside – and not for those of us who use this service just once a year. WIBBI the designers looked at the DVLA service where you don’t even need your MOT certifcate or insurance details any more.