Like drawing blood from a stone?

The (slow) evolution of evidence options for Government Gateway registration

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First, the good news ... "We recently added Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) driving licences as an additional evidence source, helping more of our customers get online to use our digital services."  Urgh

Given the stupidity of it not previously being an option (and all the comments on this site about that) ... welcome news indeed.

BUT, "We need 2 forms of evidence to confirm a customer’s identity online and customers are now able to select 2 items from the following where they are available:
* tax credit claim details
* P60 or most recent payslips
* UK passport details
* information held on your credit file (such as loans, credit cards or mortgages)
* your Self Assessment tax return (in the last 3 years)
* Great Britain driving licence or Northern Ireland driving licence

So ... if you're not in receipt of TCs, and retired, and don't have any outstanding loans or mortgage (like me for instance) - then you're still reliant on 2 out of 3 items (Passport, Driving licence and SATR).  And in my case none of those is guaranteed to remain in place.

I'm told that my Passport must always be renewed prior to expiry as otherwise a new one will not be issued (family reasons that are too complicated & personal to go into here), my Driving Licence may shortly be removed (due to age not malfeasance) which is no concern as driving is no longer a pleasure, and I only complete a SATR each year because I feel it is necessary (despite HMRC continually telling me, wrongly, that I don't need to do so).

My conclusion?  Obviously 'they' don't need me to access the Government Gateway as a private taxpayer ... so maybe they don't need me to be a taxpayer?

[All the above extracts are from HMRC's latest Agent Update bulletin.]

Replies (3)

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By Hugo Fair
22nd Jul 2022 21:20

It may not have been the most brilliant of Titles, but at the heart of this post is a piece of news that I would have expected some of you to welcome (whilst choking on HMRC's continuing use of the word 'customers') - namely:
* GB driving licences (not just the Northern Ireland variety) now being accepted as part of the identification process for a client wishing to register for the Govt Gateway.

Hardly earth-shattering, but worth noting (given all the complaints here previously)?

Thanks (2)
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By janelm
24th Jul 2022 11:09

Recently did this for a tricky case. They had oldstyle (non photo) driving licence, I couldn't find anything that specifically says it wouldn't work, it has all the required numbers/fields to enter, but (worked out afterwards) it failed on this.
They had very little credit history. The questions were along the lines of "Have you opened a new current account in the last a) 12 months b) 1-2 yrs c) 2-5 years d) 5 years plus" and so there were basically options to say 5+ years or never to the various loan questions. Succeeded with this + P60 info.

Thanks (2)
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By BillKate
25th Jul 2022 16:27

Related the good news (!) to a client last week as we were about to assist with the online declaration, so very timely.
However, client assures me he has a new photocard licence, he entered the relevant details ..........and it was still rejected!
Would like to know if anyone has been successful with a UK driving licence?

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