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Here is what the Gov.uk site should say, saving millions of wasted scarce public resources:
"Just call an accountant, as we are a bunch of useless tossers who muck stuff up and get it wrong."
Every page on gov.uk should carry the warning:
"This information was filtered by pixies who don't know the difference between truth and lies.
If you wish to rely on the information on this page get a second opinion from a professional who has been trianed in the subject area under discussion."
I had reason recently to call the Birmingham stamp taxes office about a claim to stamp duty relief on a share transaction. Despite being a dedicated office with staff who each deal with claims under only particular sections of the legislation, I was told by the HMRC operative that she opens gov.uk in the morning, looks up the checklist of 11 questions on that site, and uses it as a tick list in checking the applications. There appeared to be no knowledge or awareness of the underlying legislation and its application. Pretty worrying.
Received from a contact in ATT:
"If you would like to send ABAB your views on the HMRC pages of GOV.UK, please complete our GOV.UK online survey" to be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/administrative-burden-advisory-board.
but be quick, as the closing date is 1st DECEMBER!
I have found and reported a number of errors on various GOV.UK pages including one that made a legally incorrect statement regarding P11Ds. I know of others who have reported other pages for inaccuracy, missing information etc.
From my reports only the P11D was acknowledged and corrected after about 6 weeks.
Yet the stream of self-congratulatory tweets about their wonderful 'agile' processes, user reviews and testing, classes for third-parties, awards won etc continue daily, whilst any criticisms or reports of errors go unanswered.
There are some incredibly talented and skilled people at GDS, but in my opinion they have, like many bureaucracies, grown too large and become self-replicating, whilst losing site of why they were set up in the first place and the reason they exist. My impression is that the 'methodology' has become more important than the outputs from it, and that building the actual web pages is seen as an annoyance which gets in the way of the technology and 'agile' processes.
HMRC themselves do not know enough about what they are doing, resulting in incorrect penalties and interest being charged. I have tried several times to explain to the person doing a VAT review of my company that a VAT return based on cash accounting principles is very different from the statutory accounts yet they still compare the two and draw inaccurate conclusions - their conclusion being that my company owes VAT when it doesn't. What can we do?
As if to prove my statement above right, yesterday we got the idiotic changes to flat rate VAT. I have posted on here and on other sites over the past few years, all we need to do is amend a few sectors like this:
"Engineer 14.5%"
How hard can that be? Instead these complete twits come up with a daft new set of rules which we'll probably find ways around so clients on 12% will stay on 12%.
You can't make it up how wrong these guys can get really easy stuff.