When I said a few weeks back that I’d submitted by tax return by post, recorded delivery so that I knew it’d got there, a ouple of people wondered why I didn’t use the online sstem for submitting it.

There’s a number of reasons for it, although this story on the BBC about it having crashed wasn’t in that list ’til today.

Mainly, I like cast-iron proof that it’s been received by HMCE. I’ve been bitten before by “Well, just because you submitted it online doesn’t mean we received it”, and also by “If we send something out to you, we assume you’ve received it – but that doesn’t work the same way when you send something to us”. In my experience, the cunts at HMCE will lose tax returns just for fun. I don’t know what systems they’ve got there, but it’s all too easy for them to lose information. I prefer to make sure they at least have to lose hard-copy, rather than something that can be killed by just the click of a mouse. Yeah, I’m cynical – but then, I’ve been on the receiving end of some seriously shit service at the hands of HMCE, so it’s understandable.

Secondly, I just don’t trust a system that’s a) been written by shyster motherfuckers like Capita and EDS (and that is renowned for being a sack of shit) and b) that’s not secure enough for royalty, MPs or celebrities. Oh, it’s secure enough for Joe Public of course – just not for special people. So no, I don’t trust the system at all.

Hell, the system isn’t even stable enough to handle the load when lots of people submit their forms just in time for the deadline.

So I’ll stick with submitting my forms by post, thanks. I might let the accountant do it online – so lng as I get a full hard-copy of it as well, for my records and verificatiion.