The Daily Novel

After spending much of the last two and half days trying to submit my Self Assessment Tax Return online I am somewhat angry. And since I am far from computer illiterate I rang the Inland Revenue press officer to find out what the problem was their end.

There wasn’t one, she told me. They had been doing self assessment for ten years. This year was the best ever and around two and a half million people have filed their returns online, up nearly half a million on last year. Their web site had worked fine, taking 15000 forms online at the peak.

I persisted. How did she know there had been no complaints? Because, she told me, she was immediately informed of customer complaints about self assessment. She did, however, tell me that Beachcomber had done his column on it in today’s Daily Express. So I looked at their web page. It was not there. So off I went to the newsagents. I eventually found the article, which is on Page 48.

The headline was:

90 years old and still tackling taxing problems

So I thought my memory must be at fault again and that H. B. Morton, who wrote the column when Lord Beaverbrook owned the Daily Express, was still alive. Beachcomber did not sound 90 and he told me that Morton had died  in 1975 and that it was the column that was 90 years old.

His experience was even worse than mine, because it started three years ago.

So it is two journalists, who thinks the tax office should pull its socks up, against two and a half million satisfied customers.

You need to know the details if us journos are going to be credible.

So Part Two and Three of this saga will be in the guest blog slot, the crisply written stories which the present Beachcomber, William Hartston, wrote in the Express.

Oh, just in case you’re wondering, the problems had nothing to do with strike by the public service unions. The offices we were dealing with were all manned or (womaned).