UK Inland Revenue To Launch Business Portal

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

23 July 2001

The UK Inland Revenue announced last week that it will be rebuilding its IT infrastructure to give business users a single view of their tax records, with a similar service for individual users of the online self assessment service following close behind. 'The way the Revenue infrastructure was originally put together could not provide customers with information in a format they could understand,' said Terry Hawes, director of the e-services programme. 'We have stepped up the work in this area enormously and we will deliver this for companies.'

According to the Inland Revenue, approximately 150,000 people have registered to send their tax returns over the internet, but apparently, out of an eligible four million, only 50,000 have actually used the feature. However, Barry Glassberg, the director of e-business at the IR believes that the growth of the number of users will be geometric as opposed to linear, and that the poor take-up is nothing to be worried about. He also believes that the figure is set to grow now that tax return software is being embedded in commercial accounting products.

The UK taxation authority has reportedly spent over £20 million so far on technology to facilitate online self assessment, and has been in the news recently regarding the millions more it has spent on new advertising campaigns to persuade the British public to complete their self assessment forms early. (What was wrong with Hector?) It says that it aims to get 50% of the eligible taxpayers using its online services by 2005, which looks to be a bit of a challenge given the current take-up figures.

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