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A friend mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she had a shortfall on her National Insurance record and would not get a full pension. I mentioned to her the possibility of making voluntary contributions to improve her pension but thought no more about it until we met this week and she talked me through her very unhappy experience in trying to find a way of actually doing this.
Without going into too much detail, she found it frustrating all the way through – being held in long queues on the phone, lots of messages from a chat bot saying her question would be dealt with, only to be then cut off. She found that she needed a 12-digit reference number, but this could only be obtained by making a call to a different number. At one point it seemed that the only option was to send in a payment by cheque: but, like many people, she no longer had a cheque book.
In the end she told me that she had given up because it was too difficult and expressed amazement that the government had made it so complicated when all she wanted to do was give it money.
There will be two reactions to this. One group of readers will say that it shows that what we need to do is to get back to a system where people can talk to real human beings in person and make payments over the counter. The other group will say HMRC must really get its technology sorted out so that all of this can be done painlessly online in a few clicks.
In a nutshell, here we have the whole debate about the future making tax digital strategy. But I am sure of one thing: the status quo is not an option.
If you do one thing…
See HMRC’s amended advice on the notification of research and development claims (tinyurl.com/hmrcranddclaimplan).
