HM Revenue & Customs Offine Services

It's a task I dread and like most of the population I procrastinate until the last minute.Filling in a tax return has to be one of the most tedious tasks. It seems an unnecessarily manual process in this modern day. PAYE works well. Why can't this be extended and avoid anyone filling in a separate tax return?

Having put it off for ages, I finally dedicate some weekend time to fill it in. It shouldn't be too difficult this year as I've learned from past experience that it really helps to keep my paperwork in order throughout the year. I'm so hoping that they haven't changed the format of the form this year. When they do it really throws me as I always base my new form on the previous year's. Anyway, I dig out my credentials and fire up the Inland Revenue tax return service login page (linked from http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/online/index.htm) only to get:

Online Service temporarily unavailable
This online service is currently unavailable.
Please check our Service Availability page for the latest information.
We endeavour to keep disruption to a minimum and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Their online service is offline? I contemplate this contradition and despairingly follow the suggested "Service Availability" link, which takes me to a generic list enumerating all the possible problems to the entire gamet of inland revenue services. It's a long list. Annoyingly it hasn't taken me straight to the appropriate portion of the page so I have to scroll down to find the relevant entry:

Self Assessment (SA)
Services are unavailable for technical reasons. We expect services to be available as soon as possible.
Follow the Service issues link which details the current problems identified with this service and advice on how to self help where possible.

"Technical reasons" - that's useful to know. I now clearly understand fully why the service isn't up. "As soon as possible" isn't much better. Can't they even make an educated guess based on the mysterious technical reason? Hold on, there's yet another link, "Service issues". I'll try that.

Again, I just get a massive list of issues. This doesn't give me much confidence that my taxes are paying for the appropriate standard of software development and testing.

After a brief scan, it's clear that the small issue of their entire system being down isn't regarded as an 'issue' on this page. At least I've run out of links to visit so there's nothing more for me to do than to close the page and get on with my life.

Don't get me wrong. I really, really like the ability to submit my tax return online. It's much easier filling in an online form with the ability to go in and make amendments before submitting. I used to fill in the paper version with a pencil and only after I was happy with it, I'd trace over it with a biro, and then subsequently rub out the pencil. This was a right time-consuming pain, which I'm sure many others were also suffering. The online system is a lot more convenient. It's just that it would be nicer if it all worked just a little bit more smoothly. The root cause may be that the Inland Revenue isn't a business and therefore there is little incentive for them to provide great service. 'Adequate' or 'satisfactory' is good enough. How about privatising the collection of taxes, allowing competing companies to entice a share of tax payers to use their service. They could get a small fee for each submission, incentivising them to make their system as efficient as possible?