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In defence of the non FBI approach
In defence of those of us who do not worship the god of Technology or subscribe to the concept of "progress" just for the sake of it, I really must take up the cudgels against some of the comments that Nicholas Myles has made.
He has wilfully misunderstood the earlier posting about the benefit of paper filing and, not admittedly in quite those words, implied that paper filers are dinosaurs. In answer, let me direct your attention to Tax investigations: pre-empting the Revenue's curiosity.
The key reason I would imagine why many accountants have stuck with paper filing is not because we are old-fashioned but because, in our opinion, that provides much greater security for our clients in the event of an enquiry. So let me put the boot on the foot and ask the e-filers how they think they are doing the best for their clients when they are not routinely submitting accounts?
I was also struck by the comment that if ELS resources had been directed towards FBI, then there wouldn't have been any problems with FBI. Even as a non ELS user myself, this does appear to me to be both arrogant and offensive: just because Nicholas happens to find that FBI works for him, why does he assume that this must also be the case for everyone else and that money spent supporting another system (which, unlike FBI, works perfectly) is money wasted?
Unfortunately, it does seem to me that FBI proponents have swallowed the Revenue line that FBI is such a good thing that a) compulsion is the way ahead so that we can all "enjoy" the benefits, and b) there is no need to use persuasion or build a business case. And because of that, these proponents often come across sounding vaguely fascist in their enthusiasm.
Adam
Thanks for being so selective in choosing which comments to attack, talk about judicious editing!
To say that i have wilfuly misunderstood (whatever you think that means) is errant nonsense. if you look at my many postings on FBI you will see that i have also been highly critical of the system, i still belive that it is the right way forward.
you can FBI and still send in paper accounts if you wish, they are not mutually exclusive. i do not beleive there is a requirement to send in accounts tho so your comments must remain supposition.
i did not say that there would have been no problems if the ELS resources had been diverted to FBI i mused upon the possibility
i have not swallowed whole the Revenue arguement however for the record i am anti compulsion period, but in my mind there is a business case for both accountants and government to proceed with FBI.
i am absolutely convinced it is the least worst option we have!
ELS for one more year
After a fair amount of research and tracking posts on Accounting Web we have now decided to stick with ELS for one more year for a number of reasons
1) We had no problems filing on any day, including 31st January. We need this reliability and stability.
2) As a firm we have over 10,000 returns to complete and lodge but the current agent online service is not designed for high volume users
3) We understand that improvements are currently being worked on, such as the shortcomings of the Users and Assistants functionality and moving towards a no 64-8 system in 2006. Electronic pdf attachments are also intended to be possible from April 2006.
So until those improvements are made to the service there is no benefit to us in dumping ELS in fact we'd be in a worse position
client's experience
one of my clients has submitted his return online ever since it was possible to do this. this year he first tried in september 04, entered all the data but failed to get an acknowledgement so knew that the submission had failed. at intervals he tried again, up to mid january 05. in all, it took 6 attempts before he successfully lodged his return. his tax office, however, have efficiently issued an "estimated" assessment on february 1st!
how on earth can they expect agents to have confidence in the system?
Can they handle - Denial of Service Attack
You might like to ask the Revenue how they will handle a future DOS attack in the final week of submissions?
http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/denial_of_service.html
Their response will be interesting
online filing
It may be that the solution does not lie in redesigning the software etc so that the Revenue can deal with a peak that is increasing year on year as more people file by internet AND they file later (both of these happened this year) but in eliminating the 31 January peak.
Either you do not have the same deadline for everybody or you offer meaningful incentives for early filing.
Re: Server Messages
It's probably worth noting that the official comments that "Remote procedure call failed" and "Page cannot be displayed" messages were browser driven are complete and utter tosh.
As someone who encountered those very messages I can confirm that both were a result of their web server / application server (IBM websphere?) and backend databases failing to talk to one another.
A clear confirmation that officials at the IR have absolutely no idea how their system works (or doesn't). Perhaps they should just go back to randomly deleting tax records... something they are good at!
S.
Compare & Contrast
The day before yesterday the Companies House website wasn't working properly.
This apology appeared very soon after it was repaired:
23/02/05 - On Tuesday 22nd February, we experienced technical difficulties with our web site on two occasions from 11.55am - 12.25pm and 2.30pm - 2.50pm. During these times, customers were unable to access our services whilst the problems were resolved.
We would like to apologise to any customers that may have been affected and for any inconvenience caused
Why are the Revenue incapable of admitting their mistakes?
UK not ready for all this online nonsense
As a sole practitioner with less than 100 tax returns to deal with, I'm still perfectly happy to do it the old-fashioned paper way; and in fact I prefer it that way.
I therefore felt very smug when reading all the problems at the end of Jan.
But I'm seriously unimpressed with being coerced into filing my payroll clients online. The government has no record of successful IT project implementation and it doesn't require a genius to say that this year's payroll filing will probably also be a complete shambles.
The wider issue for me, however, is that I don't feel it is either ethically right or practically possible to force everyone down the e-filing route. Let's face it, the government will soon need to make SA filing online compulsory if it is ever to meet its own targets for take-up. The honorable way to do that (if this government ever stopped to think about that sort of thing), however, would be to first provide a service which clearly worked all the time, which clearly provided workflow or other advantages to all concerned and which would effectively be a no-brainer. They've clearly failed so far and don't seem to be making any attempt to catch up on this "moral" shortfall.
Using good software
My software, Taxability Pro from Digita (http://www.digita.com) has made FBI a breeze. I have been using it to file my clients' tax returns from 2001/02 onwards using FBI, and no problems.
To simply turn away from FBI because of a few hiccups this year is a blinkered and grave mistake. The finger is pointed towards the Revenue for those hiccups, and it is they who must get any wrinkles sorted in their systems. This, I assume, is being done. I shall judge during the coming year.
And I shall continue to use FBI, it is so easy and quick, and I have a complete record through the tracker system in my software which returns are successfully filed and when.
Every body's favourite hobby horse
yes the IR comments at the time were very shoddy. as has been stated the peope there simply did not know they had a problem and therefore continued to deny one existed. it is clear from the '14 day amnesty' that they wised up eventually, nevertheless
I do not understand the logic of those who wish to file manually, do they also want to go back to completing their tax returns in long hand.
also the ELS supporters have been up in arms about the fact that their system is better and they should be allowed to keep it: consider a couple of points
1) if the resources used in keeping ELS going had been curtailed a year ago we may never have had FBI problems this year. i accept that IR changing supplier did not help.
2) how many tax returns were sent by ELS and by FBI. i think that probably more were sent by FBI but it would be interesting to know for sure
3) for ELS you need more than just an internet connection?
4) the great thing about FBI and it is a largely unsung one is the rebate effect. people entitled to rebates are getting them almost immediately. this is mentioned in tax tips and tools, ELS and manual do not have anywhere close to this response
as far as i am concerned the IR are right to push ahead with their internet filing policy though i accept that there are some kinks in the system and i look forward to filing PAYE and everything i possibly can electronically.
Companies House electronic filing is also good as i belive, and am yet to use, company tax filing.
where i agree with most correspondents is with a dedicated agents server and wouldnt it be lovely if we could have the same codes for all G2B services we provide.
Marion
'ELS repayments are issued as rapidly as those from FBI returns.'
i take your word for this, but where do you get that info?
'The 14 day extension is not new and it is not an amnesty. If a return is rejected by the Revenue through ELS it has always had 14 further days to be resubmitted.'
i used the term in quotation marks! i think most people understand what i mean
'If you failed to log onto the web site, or having logged on could not send, the Revenue do not know, and you cannot prove, that you tried to file.'
not so - your software should be able to provide a report which i am sure could be used as evidence if required
'I am afraid that there is a long way to go before the 'FBI' system reaches the level of satisfaction ELS has now achieved.'
well thats a matter of opinion i have used FBI for 2 years and we only had a problem for a couple of days this year. seting up and operating FBI is very simple. a lot of people have used FBI this year and that incudes the public as well as agents.
as far as i am aware ELS is only for agents and the great british public have to use FBI
lets get on with FBI
FBI, Post R & D Era?
I think, overall, FBI is a success. Teething problems are to be expected with an old dinosaur like Inland Revenue and its relatively bottomless pit of public resources, especially in cases of disaster recovery, is a distraction in the IT decision making process. The money will always be found somehow to righten any bad decisions. However, any criticism of them should be tainted by the fact that they granted a two week extension to those having gateway problems filing so or close to the deadline. I think criticism of their system designers is blinkered as well. Technology changes so rapidly money could have been lost in implementing expensive systems which rapidly grew obsolete. Instead they went for a tried and trusted method, being; let those agents keen enough to join in with their FBI experiments be the guinea pigs!
My grouse is in amending returns.
els ? fbi ?
Two small points
As far as the numbers are concerned the figures I have seen indicate that the number of returns coming in by ELS is static or falling slightly at (I think) about 400,000. So ELS is a drop in the ocean and all the growth is in FBI.
The other matter is the Revenue's "limitless resources". I think this is far from the truth as budgets have been slashed constantly in the quest to eliminate "waste". The tax credits fiasco is substantially down to the Revenue not deploying enough staff and not training them properly, and that was for financial reasons.
HMRC is, I understand, braced for some substantial staff cuts very soon.
IR/HMCE/Government Gateways
And what is going to happen after 06 April leading up to 19 May when businesses will be trying to file their P35's and P14's online?
As for SA...
We continue to use ELS for tax return filing and would suggest that we already have an "alternative gateway" - therefore the plan ought to be to extend the use of ELS up to at least 2009/10.
FBI vs ELS
Reading the comments filed so far -
ELS repayments are issued as rapidly as those from FBI returns.
The 14 day extension is not new and it is not an amnesty. If a return is rejected by the Revenue through ELS it has always had 14 further days to be resubmitted. If you failed to log onto the web site, or having logged on could not send, the Revenue do not know, and you cannot prove, that you tried to file. It is only the rejected submissions that are covered.
The technical note issued on 16 February re pension schemes says that all pension scheme returns will have to be files electronically with effect from 6 April 2007. Compulsory fbi is already on the way!
I am afraid that there is a long way to go before the 'FBI' system reaches the level of satisfaction ELS has now achieved.
Stick with ELS or risk filing on line
Having used ELS from its inception 97/98 I had
decided that 2004 would be my last year and I would switch to FBI for 2005. Now I am not so sure. Until reading of January delays I had not realised that there is no server dedicated for agents.
I have never had any problems with ELS. Yes it takes 24 hours before acknowledgement.
So what! There is an audit report proving the time and date of the original submission if required - I have never had to use it.
My nightmare at 4 o'clock on the afternoon of Monday 31st January was a local power failure caused by a workman cutting through an electric cable outside the office. After the initial paralysing horror ( there were still 3 tax forms to finish and 4 more in the "pipeline" to send) I was able to move files,computer,printer etc.to my home 1/2 hour drive away, finish off the work, plug in the old fashioned dial-up modem and off they went. No reconfiguration or waiting required.
The problem was in my control to resolve myself - however awkward.
ELS still seems attractive. Should I stick with it another year?