So yesterday was a bad day for HMRC online - SKY News

[DickM]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20110131/tbs-hmrc-software-glitch-makes-returns-t-327c223.html

................. and I thought it was me, or my computer, or my ISP :|

According to published reports, it apparently took around an hour yesterday to make a SA submission, using HMRC's secure portal.
Unfortunately I chose Sunday to make a Ltd Co's first joint HMRC CT600 and Ltd Co House accounts return on their fairly new software. It took me in excess of an hour, as the system constantly froze. I was quite relieved to get the computer generated email receipt for the return from HMRC, shortly after completing. However, nothing was mentioned about Co House Accounts being received in the HMRC email, and no confirmation email from Co House todate, or displayed on Co House's "SEARCH company information link"
I say unfortunately, because yesterday was apparently the last day for a key PAYE self assessment submission date, and the Corp Tax self assessment uses the same HMRC system (and no doubt there are further SA applications, to add to these two). This resulted in a reported 100,000 users on the site @ one time yesterday!
On the bright side I at last successfully managed to crack the user's "Trust" certification process, after giving up on previous attempts due to HMRC's on-line step by step instructions, including screen snapshots of the process being about 20% of the size of my computer's monitor........ certainly not user eye-sight friendly! I nearly resorted to a magnifying glass.
Also, my deadline submission dates for either entity are several months away, so plenty of time to recover any "blips".
BTW, please don't recommend that I use some fancy third-party Co accounts software package, as I've managed to avoid this (and any costs that it normally involves), since I commenced this process in 2007.

 

[David Griffiths]

Didn't have any problems at all. Things slowed down a bit at around 10 am, with the confirmation emails taking about five minutes instead of instantly but that's probably peak filing time once the post is opened.

Filed regularly through the day after that with no issues. I have to say that the HMRC site has generally been excellent on the last day for a few years now and we haven't had any real issues.

Yes we use (fairly inexpensive) third party software but I'd guess that the accountants in the article use probably a high range third party software. And no I'm not going to tell other people to use third party software. You pays yer money and yer takes yer choice. And lives with it.

 

[Tom McClelland]

For one of our users yesterday payroll P45/P46 submissions were polling "off the wall". They could get the submission in, but no response about success or failure ever came back to our software, only repeated messages from HMRC to "try again later". That was at about 11am. We put that down to at least one gateway server being swamped.

Other users managed to file P45/P46s without incident.

Naturally things will be much better once all employers are having to file all payments every week/month...

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

I had to phone them yesterday and it was an hour before I got the issue resolved .
I dont know why they run this system it would work better if various people had different deadlines

 

[neildigital]

I do think maybe leaving the filing to the 31st Jan is not the right way to go.

If you filed it sometime through last week, you would not have had the same problems...

Neil

 

[David Griffiths]

I do think maybe leaving the filing to the 31st Jan is not the right way to go.

If you filed it sometime through last week, you would not have had the same problems...

Neil

You sound like an HMRC spokesman.

Do you think that the accountants on this forum choose to leave everything until the last day?

 

[Tom McClelland]

Do you think that the accountants on this forum choose to leave everything until the last day?

My accountant had an interesting solution. He told all his clients that he was going on holiday for a fortnight at close of business on the 28th, and that was to be treated as an absolute deadline. I asked him if it had worked, and he said only one client failed to get their information in in plenty of time, and that is someone who fails to hit the deadline every year, and who doesn't moan about the fines.

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Do you think that the accountants on this forum choose to leave everything until the last day?

speak for yourself

 

[talkinpeace]

I had one to file yesterday - it flew through at just after 7pm.

For several years I have had a policy of charging 30% extra to anybody who delivers their records after 31 December.
And the chap who delivered on Saturday paid double.
Hence why all but two were done several days ago.
When the client sees a bill that says
Charge for SA return £nnn
Charge for late delivery £nn
all but the stupid deliver on time.

And yes, it will be slow on the 31st.
If it wasn't that would imply a huge amount of wasted bandwidth expenditure the rest of the year.

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Can we book mark this thread and use it for the same discussion next year please.

 

[DickM]

Interesting to note that there were similar threads around this time for 2008 & 2010 - see end of responses to my thread.
So 2009 must have been a good year for wine ............. rather than a HMRC whine

 

[Jezclayton]

Unfortunately I chose Sunday to make a Ltd Co's first joint HMRC CT600 and Ltd Co House accounts return on their fairly new software. It took me in excess of an hour, as the system constantly froze. I was quite relieved to get the computer generated email receipt for the return from HMRC, shortly after completing. However, nothing was mentioned about Co House Accounts being received in the HMRC email, and no confirmation email from Co House to date, or displayed on Co House's "SEARCH company information link"

Our CT600 and Abbreviated accounts were due at the end of December and we decided to utilise the HMRC joint submission service on 29th December, so quite early by comparison to many. Like you we received an HMRC submission receipt but failed to notice or even thought to look for a separate one from Companies House.

Net result £150 fine paid today for non-receipt of accounts at Companies House. Pointless appealing since they point out it is our responsibility to deliver accounts on time. The fact that we failed to do so because of their shyte software is of course irrelevant. Nice little earner if you can get it?

 

[Tom McClelland]

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Our CT600 and Abbreviated accounts were due at the end of December and we decided to utilise the HMRC joint submission service on 29th December, so quite early by comparison to many. Like you we received an HMRC submission receipt but failed to notice or even thought to look for a separate one from Companies House.

Net result £150 fine paid today for non-receipt of accounts at Companies House. Pointless appealing since they point out it is our responsibility to deliver accounts on time. The fact that we failed to do so because of their shyte software is of course irrelevant. Nice little earner if you can get it?

IMHO if you used the joint submission service and it worked with one and failed with the other that has to be ample grounds for appeal.

 

[David Griffiths]

IMHO if you used the joint submission service and it worked with one and failed with the other that has to be ample grounds for appeal.

I'd go along with that. It has to be worth a letter - send the copy of the HMRC receipt and say that you thought that meant both had gone through.

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Just found this ....

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ria/ct-joint-filing.pdf

One off costs of the joint submission system £3.4m - and it doesn't work!

I could do the same for half the price

It has a name and contact number for enquiries ...

Contact for enquiries: Steve Webster Telephone: 020 7438 6154

Why not call him to see why it failed

 

[Tom McClelland]

Just found this ....

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ria/ct-joint-filing.pdf

One off costs of the joint submission system £3.4m - and it doesn't work!

I could do the same for half the price

It has a name and contact number for enquiries ...

Contact for enquiries: Steve Webster Telephone: 020 7438 6154

Why not call him to see why it failed

My reaction is that those costs for software development and internal impact seem *very* startlingly small. But so do the benefits... :|

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

£3.4m small - blimey how much do you earn

If you mean small in terms of HMRC then maybe - but still seems like a lot of money to me.

Has the tax payer acheived the best opportunity cost for this £3.4m?

I'd still like it to work though

 

[Tom McClelland]

In the context of the total cost of those organisations figures like that are invisibly small "rounding errors". The total software impact of the change that they made must be much smaller than I thought, for the software bill to have been so low. Just my 2p. And I'm also slightly puzzled that they think this change is going to save them less than £1m/year.