The Inland Revenue has been actively promoting their online filing services for employers’ PAYE. Let me list my complaints:
- if you want to use the service, you must register in advance. They then send your user ID and activation password to you by post "for security". Given that there are (I think) a million letters going astray each week, and that they do not use registered or recorded delivery, then I think that this is likely to be as secure as your average cardboard box.
- when you actually come to use the service, you are frequently met with "service unavailable" messages.
- once you finally do manage to get the service to work, the user ID issued to me, which I noted down carefully, and which matches the user ID confirmation letter that I got through the post, are not recognised by the system. Without this, you can’t do anything.
I’d like to point out that, overall, I find the Inland Revenue’s online filing system to be total and utter crap.
I don’t think I posted about it but I had the exact same “pile of crap” thoughts last year. Hello paper form!
they smell of wee wee’s
I kept meaning to sign up to do my self-assessments through their online system, but I can imagine the chance of being able to get onto their site during the last week of making the return would be negligible, and I don’t suppose they would see that as their fault.