Monday 19th March 2001 6:00pm 'Hypocritical' Inland Revenue ridiculed for failure Accountants have attacked the Inland Revenue's self-assessment scheme and described it as full of "widespread [system] failures", both on and offline, as the tax year draws to a close.

A damning report from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) says the system suffers from the same problems it did this time last year.

Many problems occurred because of human error, according to the ACCA. Although self-assessment papers have been designed to be compatible with scanning technologies, the IR still uses manual input.

Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the ACCA, accused the Inland Revenue of being hypocritical in its dealings with taxpayers. He said: "The IR will come down like a ton of bricks if the taxpayer gets it wrong but doesn't accept when it has problems itself."

ACCA members have complained that there are large numbers of errors all over the system leading to incorrectly issued penalty notices and interest charges.

Roy-Chowdhury added: "The Inland Revenue needs to accept the problems and admit the self assessment process is not getting any better. It has a lack of perception of the problem."

He added there are also "huge problems" with online self-assessment. Since last July, taxpayers have been able to complete tax applications on the web. But this has proved to be a real bind for users. Downloading the necessary software is extremely time consuming, and those who have gone to the trouble - and this figure only amounts to one per cent of the total applications - frequently experienced problems with the hosting system.

The Inland Revenue today issued a statement that explained: "Introducing a new system as large as self assessment is bound to result in some errors, but we have worked hard to ensure that these were minimised and put right as soon as possible. We recognise that there is always room for improvement."

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-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), March 20, 2001