The 'E-filing of personal tax returns survey' — undertaken by seven professional bodies and originally reported on by Richard Curtis in 'Beyond the deadline' (Taxation, 2 November 2006, page 101) — has been forwarded to HMRC and can be found on the CIOT website at www.tax.org.uk/showarticle.pl?id=5074.
The 'E-filing of personal tax returns survey' — undertaken by seven professional bodies and originally reported on by Richard Curtis in 'Beyond the deadline' (Taxation, 2 November 2006, page 101) — has been forwarded to HMRC and can be found on the CIOT website at www.tax.org.uk/showarticle.pl?id=5074. With regards to the government's policy of encouraging the greater use of online filing, the Working Together E-Group's members state in the survey that 'we are committed to supporting this policy and to working with government on ways of achieving this. The suggestions made in this report reflect our belief that through continuing to work together, the direction and priorities given to further e-developments will be on measures which have the support of taxpayers, agents and HMRC'.
The key findings of the survey are as follows.
- There is a high level of enthusiasm for e-services, but widespread concern about HMRC's ability to deliver reliable, robust systems.
- 17.6% of respondents use HMRC's online product and they would welcome enhancement of the software to include more of the supplementary pages.
- The rejection rate is too high, especially as the system has been in existence for five years.
- Paper substitute returns will be needed beyond 2008.
- Those taxpayers who are unable to file electronically must be catered for.
- Problems with online agent authorisations need to be urgently addressed.
- Past lessons must be learnt and the 'Carter Principle' (which says that 'as part of their work to deliver robust, high capacity services, HMRC should build in more rigorous testing … and if any tests are not successful the measures relating to that service should be deferred') must be adhered to. Respondents' greatest fear was the failure of systems close to deadlines.
We will be reporting and commenting on this in more detail in a future issue of Taxation.