The Inland Revenue's much- trumpeted electronic tax returnservice has turned out to be a gigantic flop. This is the first yearin which tax returns and tax bills can be filed and paidelectronically over the internet.
The Inland Revenue expected around 200,000 to use the servicebut, by this weekend - with the January 31 deadline looming - onlyjust over 34,000 people had successfully managed to file theirreturns electronically.
The Inland Revenue says it will investigate why the servicefailed to catch on. The IR's Claudine Lashley says that about ninemillion taxpayers get a tax return and the electronic service wasaimed at the four and a half million who don't use an accountant.
"More than 124,000 registered to use the service and we want tofind out why they didn't then go on to use it."
Judging by my own experience, I can guess that many of themsimply gave up in frustration. In my case, each time I tried tofile, errors on my return resulted in rejection. Where these errorsoccurred in a listed box on the tax return, there were helpful tipsfor sorting it out. The real problem arose when the return continuedto be rejected for unspecified reasons.
At this point, I did need to persevere, and I could easily havegiven up in frustration, printed off my tax return and sent it in bypost. In the end, I owe my success to the extremely helpful InlandRevenue staff - thank you Adam Creeger - at the Electronic BusinessUnit at Shipley, who, once contacted, simply don't give up on you.
My problem boiled down to an out-of-date version of InternetExplorer - I had to download the newer version - and a quirk in thesystem which refuses to accept names with apostrophes in them - howstupid is that?
Hopefully next year, glitches like this will have been ironed outof the system.
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