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Disappearing Statements

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16th Dec 2008
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I'm grateful for the Practitioner's assistant for alerting me to the thing in Working Together 33 about agents' statements being (temporarily) a thing of the past. The next pair of agents’ statements (Dec 2008 and June 2009) won't happen for all sorts of hokum about security and data issues.

I'm a mild-mannered man, but this is enough to turn anyone into Victor Meldrew. It's just illogical, wrong-headed and unjustified. If the system was in breach of security and data issues then why has it been allowed to continue for 11 years? Why do they feel it necessary to say it's breached some of these things, but are coy about what these were? Is this breach a criminal/civil offence?

I know that some agents don’t rate the arrival of the statements and some just heave them straight through a shredder. Each to their own – I value them as being a handy reference source. They present statements of account in a format that is better than the clients’ “balance brought forward” style of thing. They give a ready reminder of which tax office is involved in a client’s affairs, with a general public phone number on there if you’re not in a hurry. They have payslips on them that are ever useful and they give you insight into what the Revenue thinks is the address of the client.

If they are deemed trivial and we should all go track such things down online, then why are they going to bother bringing them back? And if they are deemed so necessary that they have to be brought back, how can they be taken away in such a cavalier fashion? I think we should be told a little more if we’re working together, not kept in the dark.

Some agents will be happy because they aren’t confronted with the need to choose between time wasted on filing them (who obviously don’t have enough teenaged children) and disposing of them.

But to sneak the whole thing through with inadequate justification or notice is high-handedness of the first order. ‘Working Together’ begins to resemble a kind of Orwellian piece of double-speak meaning ‘Working Against’

Geoff Challinger

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Replies (16)

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By AnonymousUser
09th Jan 2009 16:01

Thank you Tom and the anonymous help desk chap
I haven't been able to view statements for a while, always getting an Explorer error message which included "The file could not be written to the cache". After phoning the help desk several times and trying various things I gave up - that one tick in the Tools, Options box has worked. Wonderful!!

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By User deleted
30th Dec 2008 16:11

ELS emailed statements
For me, the agent statements (not payslips) have only become necessary since the Revenue stopped emailing them, usually in batches, every couple of months till 2005.

Therefore, I could have done without the agent copies from 1997. As it was, we received up to 3 statements, and now we're lucky if we get one, without trawling through the online client list.

In my circumstances therefore, they have got this almost exactly backwards, and they could have IINTRODUCED agent copies in 2006 not withdrawn them in 2008.

In the early days I was also able to obtain blank giro payslips, but think this may no longer be possible. Backwards again.

Copy statements to agents was one of the promises made by the Revenue as their part of the SA project, and upholding this promise might be why they are not planning to do away with them altogether.

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By User deleted
30th Dec 2008 15:22

Great
Tom -Thanks so much for posting the answer - now I can see what my clients have been sent !

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By thomas34
23rd Dec 2008 18:54

Blank pdf's
Geoff

I had the same problem and after a half a day's effort it's been sorted. My computer man advised that Adobe Reader 9 is fraught with problems, so uninstalled it and installed Adobe Reader 8. We still had a blank page on the Portal so I agreed with him that I'd try the IR online helpdesk.

On the basis that I'd never, ever sorted anything satisfactorily by this route in around 8 years, I was amazed to speak to someone who was clearly out of place in that organisation and who cured the problem in 3 minutes.

His solution was as follows. Internet Explorer - Tools - Options - Advanced - around 11 items from the bottom "Do not save encryted pages to disk" - tick that box. It worked for me!

Please don't take this as authoritative advice as I know b-gg-rall about computers. Good Luck.

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By geoffemtacs
23rd Dec 2008 15:56

95% reliable - I wish
And then I try and hook out a statement from the online system because the cumulative position figure doesn't make any sense when you look at the individual years. The system lets me through to open a pdf of the statement. Only the pdf opens to a 'Done' state with nothing appearing on screen (same applies to all clients). Online Services are going to investigate why this is happening and call me back. Sometime.

That's more efficient?

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By carnmores
23rd Dec 2008 12:17

Geoff
that was a balanced and reasoned reply , though my view with compulsory online filing is that all agents have computer access and the online statements have all the paper ones do and more

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By carnmores
23rd Dec 2008 17:29

You are correct about this
the statements are opening as blank pdf

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By carnmores
24th Dec 2008 11:33

Tom
you are a genius

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By geoffemtacs
23rd Dec 2008 09:50

Horses for courses
No doubt. The online system is splendid and is a wonderful paid of braces. Some people rely on the belt that is the printed statement and some of us like both and just use the best means available for the task that is to hand.

I can understand luddites not using the online system and gadget junkies not wanting the paper system. It's the Revenue hypocrisy that gets on my nerves. It's a vital system or it ain't. And until their system is something above 95% reliable it remains a vital system.

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By carnmores
22nd Dec 2008 14:26

i still disagree tho i hear your comments
we have this discussion every so often - may i suggest that you have a look at the SOA payments section on line and see how much more useful they are. is a paper statement really the only or best way of checking the office ? come on guys

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By geoffemtacs
22nd Dec 2008 09:39

Voice of the luddite
So I want to know which tax office is dealing with a client. Compare and contrast: Open file, flip to agent's statement, there you go. 4-5 secs?

Some clients don't even have that information accessible online Or, log onto IR, enter code and password, click enter, click to go through to SA, enter client name, select the right client, click view statements. If it's working, you'll have a statement which is a pdf, which will open slowly and there's your info. I just did this as an experiment to see how long it would take and it tells me the pdf downloading is done but there's nothing on screen. Damn, it's screwed up again. Even when it works, the whole process takes around 20-30 times as long. And this on a 3-month old fast PC.

But finally Nicholas, if they're doing this because it's more efficient online, why are they planning to bring them back?

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By User deleted
21st Dec 2008 22:26

But electronic statements . .
. .. don't have payslips attached.

The main use of the paper statements was to provide payslips for those clients who claimed not to have received one. I can't see any way to print a payslip from the website.

Yes, I know that there are electronic options, but I can't be alone in having clients who simply refuse to contemplate that possibility. And I can't be the only one with a low opinion of Shipley's ability to correctly process a payment sent with a covering letter as opposed to a payslip

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By carnmores
21st Dec 2008 18:28

luddites
online info is vastly superior

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By thomas34
20th Dec 2008 10:27

Me as well
Well summarised Geoff. Like you, I use the statements to confirm the correct tax office amongst other things.

This was the first I'd heard of this effective breach of data protection. The important part of Working Together 33 reads "In the light of the stricter data security requirements imposed across all government departments" ......

Imposed by whom? On the basis that somebody has re-interpreted data protection law, where or what is the purported breach? As usual we have zilch explanation from HMRC.

I appreciate that there may well be some paperless offices, but I can't think of any other good reason why these useful documents should be shredded.

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By dennismiller
19th Dec 2008 15:18

Couldn't agree more!
About the only thing that seems to work and give clear, concise and useful information is taken away at a stroke!

Can we not demand that they be re-instated?

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By geoffwolf
19th Dec 2008 14:24

agree
I agree wholeheartedly.

This is a real nuisance now because I am one of those agents dor whom the view statements online is working.

I have found these statements on paper particularly useful because they can throw up anomalies quickly by a flick through.

I also agree that the additional availability of payslips is exremely handy. They save time and letter writing for those clients whopass thei tax payments throughus

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