28 February, 2012

Online VAT woes

Arrgh - we're trying to be good citizens and are preparing to file our UK Gov't VAT (Value Added Tax) returns on-line. At the moment we're doing this unpaid work to fit in with the Government plan to reduce its costs by entering data for them on-line. We used to print off the details and mail them in a letter to them, but no not only do we have to be unpaid tax collectors now we must use their computer system.
We've been through the first stage of registration on-line, then we waited for a confirmation letter with an activation code, but when we attempt to logon to record the code the system does not accept our login details. It's not like we've forgotten the password or user Id, we printed it and also wrote it down. We're even using cut and paste to make sure we make no mistakes. No luck, so we've gone through their on-line password reset rigmarole, effectively answering eight identity questions to find the new password apparently doesn't work.  It was not until we 'phoned the HMRC that we discovered that three failed login attempts leads to an automatic two hour lock out. So we now have to sit and wait. Why didn't their system tell us we'd been locked out?

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