Online filing? You can keep it...

[Martin]

Hi all,

Just wasted an afternoon trying to do my first on-line filing, since giving
up in despair 2 or 3 years ago. To be fair, people like Doug warned me, and
I haven't invested in 3rd party s/ware (I naively assumed IR's own would do
all I need), but...

1. You can't do partnerships;

2. The system is painfully slow (despite being on broadband) - I could
have done many by hand in the time I failed to do one;

3. Not all clients are accessible (yes, 64-8s are in place!);

4. Extra boxes have been added - e.g. how much has been paid on a/c
(18.8a or somesuch). Why?

5. Worst of all, some boxes are omitted - e.g. tax paid on taxed interest
from p'ship (box 4.74) So haviing gone right through it, the bl**dy return
is wrong, and the resulting tax calc wrong.

6. The system, of course, says it's all OK. I vote we go fully into
Europe and let the Germans run everything for us [or ask Troy to do all IR's
data crunching for them - in Lotus123 ]

Before I make an idiot of myself moaning direct to IR, has anyone got more
positive experiences, or tell me if I've been doing something wrong? And is
it better with 3rd party s/ware, in which case any suggestions on "best
value" product?

Thank goodness we've got a long w/e to cheer up.

TIA

 

[Martin]

5. Worst of all, some boxes are omitted - e.g. tax paid on taxed interest
from p'ship (box 4.74) So haviing gone right through it, the bl**dy return
is wrong, and the resulting tax calc wrong.

Ah! Just solved this one. I should have selected the req'd sections at the
outset. Since it automatically calcs gross div and assoc tax credit (but
without the favourable rounding you get manually), I don't think it
unreasonable that it could have calculated tax paid on interest in a box
labelled "interest taxed at 20%".

I stand by the rest of my criticisms, and I suspect the IR's ambition to
have us all do their key-punching for them for free is doomed. I can't wait
to see what happens when the little wizened silver-surfers are obliged to
file on-line in a few years!