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If it's anything like what happened with the official UK lottery site (which banned almost all non-IE *and* non-Windows users from its online games until earlier this year), it'll take about 3 years before the Aussies bother to do another site redesign cycle and suddenly realise what a snafu they originally made.

System Requirements

I've sucessfully used Firefox on Linux and Safari on OS X.

The first system (about 2000 or so) required you to download a windows-only binary, but now it's all browser based and very easy to use too.

The UK government has a truly excellent Web-based tax filing system http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/. It is one of the best examples of a robust, intuitive, helopful Web-based system I know.

It saves the government heaps in terms of manually checking paper-work and entering figures.

Just move to somewhere you can :-)

"than I'd give out to anyone who's not an authorised government official"

A GP isn't an authorised government official, and you'd be scared if you saw the state of the records routinely passed around in the health service. BTW, the NI number is no longer used as a 'real' form of ID, requiring a better intersection of one or more pieces of ID. Again, it's not proof of your identity despite being asked for on some forms.

"information is now potentially in the hands of someone unscrupulous."

More unscrupulous than the home office? Seriously, you can't escalate an NI number to anything other than paying taxes or finding out that your national insurance contributions are up to date, specifically it's tied to your address, name and earnings. It can be used to claim benefits, but the address would be redflagged if there are tax inputs using it.

"If anything untoward were to happen, I have virtually no recourse"

See above. Generally speaking there isn't a lot that can happen that wouldn't result in someone getting in contact with you.

"it's impossible to get a new NI number:"

It's difficult, not impossible. You have to attend a one-on-one interview and prove who you are, although it's not generally necessary because it's not an important piece of information except for tax records.

Tezza, "Please tell me where I'm struggling under the weight of that?"

So you started a clothing line in Australia, moved to the UK and you are no longer trading, but they still send you the forms and you fill them out?

Admittedly, I can see where you aren't exactly overburdened with paperwork, but why the hell are you still signing the forms?

"I don't see any British equivalent."

Self-assessment can be returned electronically; VAT can be returned electronically (although most financial packages will actually print on the form), PAYE can be submitted electronically. That's all I checked for, but you may have missed the paperwork that drops through any business owners door on a semi-frequent basis.

This is the reason behind the UK's Gift Aid scheme. Most individuals give money because they beleive in a charities aims, not because they want to claim against their income. Why not give the tax break to the charity if the donor does not want it.

You have to go through a third party to file taxes? Sheesh, the UK tax office has had a big push trying to get people to do electronic filing. Or are you talking about having to use an ISP?

Your figures are out of date. The current rates are, in short: 0% on the personal allowance of £4615 (more for old people, those with children, and some other groups), 10% on the next £1920, 22% on the next £28070, and 40% above that. You need to earn at least £34515 to pay anything at the higher rate.

In fact, some people have suggested to the company that they work for, that in view of how i makes the vast percentage of its revenue charging for configuring, setting up and maintaining the software they develop, that it might be worth it to open source the product and give the software away, but charge for everything else. So if you're really broke you can get it for free, or if you want to look at it before putting it on your machines, you can do that. But if you want anything else, even instructions on how to install or use it, you have to pay something.

Why is this such a problem for you? Is it that you think they should give everything away? They have to eat, too. If you don't like it, don't agree to their terms. Since the source code is available without restrictions, take the time and effort to study the code and learn how it works, pay someone else to do that, or pay them and/or agree to their restrictions.

Has anyone noticed there are no open-source tax preparation or payroll software programs? (If I am wrong, someone e-mail me). Because those aren't very sexy for programmers to work with - which means that people aren't volunteering to do them for free - and because they require constant maintenance. (Not [merely] because of bugs, but because the tax laws and payroll processing rules change every year.)

Someone has to pay for the maintenance since this is not something your average programmer either wants to do for free (in the case of a payroll product) or has the resources to do on his own (in the case of a tax preparation program.)

Now, I know that there is GNU Cash as a workalike for Quicken but I know of no open-source software for mundane apps like payroll or tax preparation, and if there were, I can't see how we could expect them to be kept up to date without significant resources to handle the average of 10,000 tax law changes yearly. And that's just the U.S.

Every country has its own rules and thus a tax package to handle the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules would be worthless for Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) or for the UK's Inland Revenue (IR). Or the other tax authorities in the other 160+ jurisdictions around the world, almost all collecting some form of income tax. Then there's the 30+ states in the U.S. that also impose taxes on income, provinces in Canada (if they do, I'm not sure) and other subdivisions of governments elsewhere.

Now, some of these agencies are providing on-line tax preparation over their websites, but the method to do this is not open source, and would you expect to pay the lowest possible tax by using, or would you really want to trust, a tax package developed by the taxing authority? :)

Historical note: the typical quote "The power to tax is the power to destroy" was originally written by U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall as "That the power of taxing by the States may be exercised so as to destroy..." McCulloch v. Maryland 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), the first case declaring a statute void for violating the constitution.

Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
http://paul.washington.dc.us

Inland Revenue
Of course if you live in a different country this may not help much :-)

When I checked into it, the income tax hit that I would take wasn't much more than what I'm hit with here in the US (including FICA). I'm not sure if Dublin included their own special set of taxes or not (wasn't interested in that area anyway). The Brits that I talked to in Ireland said they paid less in taxes. According to this Ireland tax page and this UK income tax page, it could be a toss up depending on how much you make. I do know that the petrol taxes are much lower, while the VAT is a bit higher.

It's probably time to look harder at taxing intellectual property, especially copyrights and trade secrets. (Patents are less of a problem. Patents are easy for taxation authorities to identify. But taxing a trade secret can be tough.)

Since copyrights cause governments to incur costs in their enforcement, they should be taxed to a level such that governments recover all the costs of enforcement.

To protect taxpayers' information whilst it is being sent to us, we are using the strongest available level of security. This is known as 128-bit encryption.

The browser that you are using does not appear to support this level of security. If you are sure that your browser supports 128-bit encryption, click here to enter the service.

If you are not sure whether your browser supports 128-bit encryption, could you please upgrade it by visiting the Netscape or Microsoft web site and downloading the necessary software.

The government provide software for this purpose.
They also provide links to other suppliers, and in an almost-open-source move, notes for developers.

Ok its not going to be much use to you as the US tax rules are so different. But it made me wonder - are the efile formats the same worldwide?

The government provide software for this purpose.
They also provide links to other suppliers, and in an almost-open-source move, notes for developers.

Ok its not going to be much use to you as the US tax rules are so different. But it made me wonder - are the efile formats the same worldwide?