Like this:

So… I’m fed up and exasperated.

I’m in a partnership, and this is the first year we have to file a tax return. Being a technical sort of guy, it was a no-brainer that we did it online (that and the extension to the deadline it affords!).

Nobody I know wants to file a tax return, particularly. So, the designers of any online system to do this are creating a system to be used by people who don’t really want to be there, who have no great benefit or motivation for being there, and would much rather be doing something else.

Given all that, they need to make it as simple, easy, intuitive and helpful to complete as is possible.

For the most part, the individual return part of the self-assessment process isn’t bad. It’s not brilliant, but it could certainly be worse. It’s got things like progress bars, helpful tooltips and suchlike. Some of the validation is a bit mad, but on the whole it’s a nice experience.

However, if you’re a Partnership, you also apparently have to file a return for the Partnership itself, as well as individually. It took us a while to find this, and we nearly didn’t!

This part of the process seems much less intuitive, as if it hasn’t benefited from the same amount of funding, or got left out of the revamping project. We had to fill out a PDF and then submit it via a PDF forms button. Nothing actually happened when we did this, so we did it again. A while later we received a confirmation email, then another.

So far, so good, and the whole process happened with 4 days to spare.

So, I was more than unhappy to find that this morning, we’ve both received £100 penalties for failing to file a Partnership return.

Firstly, the penalty notice. There is absolutely nothing whatsoever on that form to indicate the slightest possibility that HMRC not receiving your return was anything other than a failing on your part. I read all through the “What to do if…” section, and also through the appeals form they’d helpfully included, which includes examples of where they might stoop to grant relief and examples of where they positively wouldn’t. Again, no mention of what to do if you did actually send it a return, but Old Electronic System 1 didn’t talk to New Electronic System 2.

So I phoned. I thought that, given that I had a confirmation number, it would be fairly simple to sort out. After I’d listened to a very patronising automated message about how phoning in to complain about a penalty was a pointless activity, I spoke to someone. She was very helpful, but unfortunately unable to help. You see, if you feel that HMRC, in their wisdom, have wrongly charged you, you’ll have to put it in writing. Oh, and you might as well pay now and we’ll give it back later, so you don’t get interest charges.

So, tomorrow I’ve got to put down £200 and hope that somebody in HMRC feels sympathetic to our cause. Which, given the amount of public service job cuts around at the moment, seems unlikely.

The whole process has left me thoroughly hacked off. And, for the first time in my life I feel that, next time, I would rather fill in the paper form and post it off than use the electronic one. Now, I’m a really techie person: I’m a developer, I wear stupid geeky t-shirts. I put on a CD the iPod in the living room and music comes out the kitchen, I have a rabbit which tells me about the weather and what emails I have. So, for me to prefer to fill out a form on paper rather than online is a big deal.

So, congratulations HMRC. You’ve managed to turn me off technology. And so far, it’s only cost me £100.

</rant>

(you’ve probably already worked this out, but I’m not a lawyer, and you really shouldn’t take anything I’ve written as advice… as you can probably tell!)

Advertisement