Self assesment online

Self assesment online

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Trying to log in and it says it's unavailable. Shocking shambles on the 29 January. 

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By 0098087
29th Jan 2015 10:07

It's back!

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John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
30th Jan 2015 10:29

Brace yourself for today!

Thanks for the report - and it's good to see that it was a temporary blip.

But it's also a useful, but worrying early warning sign as past experience suggests today around 4-5pm is likely to be the peak SA filing time of the year as agents try to push their last authorised returns through before the weekend.

To give them credit, HMRC's SA Online systems have been pretty robust in recent years, handling peak loads of nearly 50k returns an hour and accepting more than half a million returns on deadline day in previous years.

If the response times do slow when you try to get online, this could lead to timeouts at your end, or delayed acknowledgements. The SA portal may well still be running, but slowly due to the volume of traffic.

If this happens you have the option of submitting them at quieter times. In the past HMRC has suggested that after 5pm and before 8am on weekdays are relatively peaceful - if you are able to be flexible with your working hours. Having Saturday [and Sunday - Not! Oops] available this year should spread the load a little. 

HMRC's old service availability page is also a useful port of call if things look like they're seriously wrong at SA Online. It currently reports, "There are no current service issues with Self Assessment online."

But keep us posted if you experience any further niggles.

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RLI
By lionofludesch
30th Jan 2015 10:31

Sunday ?

Sunday's available ?

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Stepurhan
By stepurhan
30th Jan 2015 11:01

Problem with peaks

This is the problem with any service that suffers short-lived but excessive peaks.

Adding extra capacity just for the peaks is tricky. Having capacity capable of coping with the peaks all year round is costly (because you're paying for a load of tech that is basically sitting idle for most of the year).

So having the system reach full capacity (and hence being temporarily unavailable to anyone additional trying to get on) is inevitable really.

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By coverack
30th Jan 2015 11:19

Sunday ?

 

Hopefully John STOKDYK can elaborate on this v.soon, in case anyone takes it as gospel - any chance Mr Stokdyk?  Solid information or rumour?  Wishful thinking?

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By Charlie Carne
30th Jan 2015 11:24

Managing data peaks & troughs

Management of fluctuating data usage is surely one of the advantages of cloud servers. Services like Amazon's AWS can accommodate changing needs very easily. I would not, of course, advocate that HMRC use a US based server farm for UK tax data, but the principle of such farms should be noted.

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Replying to Caz2000:
Stepurhan
By stepurhan
30th Jan 2015 14:19

In principle

charliecarne wrote:

Management of fluctuating data usage is surely one of the advantages of cloud servers. Services like Amazon's AWS can accommodate changing needs very easily. I would not, of course, advocate that HMRC use a US based server farm for UK tax data, but the principle of such farms should be noted.

But the fact is that such farms are only able to manage fluctuating data usage because they are supplying such services to multiple clients. They can afford to run the farm because when some of their customers are having troughs, others will be having peaks. They're not having equipment sitting around completely idle for much of the year.

There are the obvious concerns about such sensitive date passing into the hands of a third party (the server farm, even if it's in the UK). Security is an issue, especially since a data farm holding information from a variety of sources is more of a target for hackers. But rather more importantly, what happens if the third party supplier goes under while holding HMRC data?

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Replying to Wilson Philips:
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By adagen
30th Jan 2015 16:31

>>>>>But rather more

>>>>>But rather more importantly, what happens if the third party supplier goes under while holding HMRC data?<<<<<

Good procurement practice is capable of dealing with this, but our public sector is not known for its good procurement practice. Ideally, backup and backup custody arrangements can be covered contractually to ensure the data is continuously available. And for the software, escrow and licencing arrangements could be set up to ensure that the appropriate software is available along with the documentation needed to configure and run it. Of course, all such arrangements need to be tested regularly to ensure they actually work.

In the context of data protection, arrangements would be needed to ensure that the data was not passed on to any party buying assets or the business itself from the administrator.

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By DAW
30th Jan 2015 11:38

Sunday?

HMRC last allowed returns to be lodged "late" on 1st and 2nd February 2012, but this was only because HMRC staff were on strike on 31st January. This was announced by HMRC on 27th January that year. I would guess therefore this is wishful thinking by Mr Stokdyk.

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By madhumorjaria
30th Jan 2015 16:32

Not receiving confirmation that SA received

Its taking  ages for HMRC to acknowledge that the SA has been received

 

Normally it would take between 10-20 seconds to receive confirmation that a tax return has been received, but today we are having to check multiple times (between 10-15 minutes) before we eventually receive confirmation.

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By Paul D Utherone
30th Jan 2015 22:30

Working OK at the mo

As I filed 6 in the software filing queue.

Three more replies awaited, and they can carry on waiting 'til tomorrow because I'm getting some sleep!!

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John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
31st Jan 2015 10:39

Apologies for the date confusion - operator error

I'm so sorry about that. I haven't got access to an arcane tribunal decision extending the deadline by 24hrs and the Steeden v Carver precedent that allowed such wiggle room was taken away by the new penalty regime introduced in Finance Act 2011.

Sadly, I just got my dates scrambled on Friday morning. Please forgive me if I raised any false hopes and be thankful that I only write about tax filing systems and am not responsible for actually submitting returns myself.

My partner often points out my lapses in this area, so I will take heed and pay a lot more attention to my diary before posting comments like this in the future.

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By coverack
31st Jan 2015 11:44

Apologies for the date confusion - operator error

 

            A very gracious apology from Mr Stokdyk - we've all done pretty similar things in our time - on one occasion in the dim & distant, I omitted to factor in a client's personal allowance before giving him an estimate of what he would have to pay.  Luckily I spotted the error a matter of minutes before he started to arrange pricey loan arrangements with his bank........

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