WRITTEN ON January 27th, 2006 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Uncategorized

This year’s score: Filing process: 7 out of 10; Helpdesk: 0 out of 10

During this final week before the filing deadline, the on-line self-assessment service today worked fairly well. I hope that it survives the busy evenings and final weekend.
The main “On-line forms” service seemed OK, with pages loading quickly. “Submission” of the completed tax return also worked and quickly generated an automatic email acknowledgment. However, some features were faulty:

1. The on-line helpdesk message system failed. I then sent messages by normal email but received only inane, useless replies.

2. The donation feature which allows “gift aid” donations of tax refunds to your chosen charity was broken: Today it could find no trace even of major UK charities.

3. The “store and print” feature was faulty: It seemed to download a PDF version of my completed return, but then did not terminate itself.

Some room for improvement, but an adequate basic service for my simple affairs; helped by my 1MB cable broadband, a fast PC, Firefox 1.5 and plenty of patience.