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 | | Monday, 16 July, 2001, 08:34 GMT 09:34 UK Inland Revenue admits problems  The Inland Revenue publicly admitted that there had been problems with its e-filing system By BBC News Online's personal finance reporter Sarah Toyne The Inland Revenue is to enlist the help of community groups as part of its charm offensive to win over wary users, such as pensioners and low-income families eligible for tax credits. This can be seen as an admission by the Revenue that it cannot reassure these users on its own. It has also admitted it has had problems persuading customers to use its fledgling online service, despite having invested �20m in the service. It is to launch partnerships with community groups, such as citizens advice organisations and pensioners charities, and sign contracts with commercial companies to make its services more attractive to ordinary members of the public. On Friday, it revealed that so far this tax year only 17,953 people had registered at the site to file online - about 11,000 of those people have now filed their return over the internet.
While the Revenue said that the figures were encouraging, they still only account for a fraction of the four million individuals who must complete their self-assessment forms. Transferring self-assessment online has so far cost �20m of tax payers money. Last year, the online filing service was beset with problems. It took up to two hours to download self assessment forms from the website. The Revenue was then forced to send people who had registered a free CD-Rom. Terry Hawes, director of the Revenue's e-services programme said that the Revenue had a "willingness to learn from some of those things that were not as good as we hoped last year". About 920,000 people failed to file their last tax return by the final deadline of 31 January this year. Take up of government tax credits, such as the Working Families Tax Credit and Minimum Income Guarantee (Mig) for pensioners are also under target. Experts say that people are simply boycotting the system because of its complexity. The Revenue admitted on Friday that many of the groups that it was seeking to attract through tax credits did not want to deal with it. An Inland Revenue source admitted that this was because "most of them don't want to deal with us."
The government department watchdog the National Audit Office is expected to publish its assessment of the Revenue's online filing services within one month. Customer friendly The Revenue recently appointed Ian Schoolar from NatWest as its first ever marketing director, charged with making the Revenue appear more customer friendly. On Monday, Dawn Primarolo, the paymaster general, will launch a new advertising campaign for self assessment. Since New Labour came into power in 1997, the Revenue has taken on new roles. The Department of Social Security now the Department of Work and Pensions has had many of its powers transferred to the Revenue, as benefits have been replaced by a series of credits - administered through the tax system. | | See also:  Top Business stories now:  Links to more Business stories are at the foot of the page. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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