So the two years when the government tried it on me, I filled in as much as I could there and then but mailed it back a week before the dead line.
Never heard a thing back, so it must have been OK.

1. You could always ring up your previous employer and ask them for the P60 figures.

2. Or the Mail on Sunday. Remember, they had the source code for the UK Government Gateway for a while and some logon details. If your previous employer submitted their returns online, the MoS ought to be able to log on and get them for you. Everyone in Europe should know that.

Compare that with the true story of a man not a million miles away from myself who suffered a bit of identity theft – the banks/credit card companies acquitted themselves brilliantly.

IPS still like to pretend that their ID cards will prevent (sic) identity theft. Imagine that, one day, despite Sir James Crosby, they got their way and that IPS ID cards wormed their way into the nation’s payment systems.

Do you think the service would be as good as the banks’ and credit card companies’? Or better? Or more like PAYE? How long would it be before we were reduced to a barter economy?

I met an IT person at a party just after Christmas. (I am in confessional mood.) He works for HMRC. No names, no pack drill.

We were talking about the tax credits system. There are apparently 2,000 or so unique combinations of … things … that affect each claimant’s tax credit amount. And those things can change daily.

My interlocutor reckoned it would take between 6 and 8 weeks for each change to be processed through the system. And that’s with the bright sparks in the Treasury pressing the buttons. Translate those figures into IPS speak and … you’ll be begging for the return of the days when you only had to deal with PAYE.

If you deal with the Corporation Tax people, they are very bright, very quick on the uptake and open to reasonable negotiation.

If you deal with the R&D claims people, it’s first name terms half way through the first phone call and they ring you to apologise if the cheque is sent out on Tuesday instead of Monday.

It’s a different story in PAYE. As you describe.

I do feel that the moment of payment is the moment I most want to say (on a comps slip, for example) please DO NOT spend this money on

– wars (on anything)
– surveillance