I’m attempting to pay my taxes. I love paying taxes. I only pay taxes when I earn money, so the more I pay the more I must have earned. I like to pay them early to get them done.
The HMRC web site is probably the best example of how the government are seemingly determined to make public services as inaccessible as possible. Frankly, it’s a disgrace that this ever got through a basic idea review, never mind a Critical Design Review in the ‘consulting’ firm that designed this online fiasco.
I’m trying to download my annual CT600 form so that I can file my corporation tax return. Now, I’m assuming that the ‘webmasters’ at this site (I use the terms in their truest sense – ‘web’ to mean a tangled mess and ‘masters’ to mean experts at creating it) know that it doesn’t really work, but despite this I must log in, go through a dozen screens of information, selections and button clicking, only to be presented with this a message containing my personalised error code:
8OIMBHBRXZEG8ZPO
which I must report to them using the link available to contact HMRC which takes me to anywhere except a form to report the error. Well done chaps – keep billing the hours to a civil servant somewhere in HMRC who believes in fairies.