Archive for the 'ireland' Category

Irish Revenue Commissioners make eFiling mandatory

Published March 23rd, 2010 in HM Customs and Revenue, online, secure certificate, slippery slope, IRS, efiling, Revenue Commissioners, paperless, eire, Pay and File and ireland. 0 Comments

Back in 2006 we mused over whether estatements from  a Bank were good or bad we concluded they were goodfor the bank, but bad for the individual.

Well now abother large organisation here in Ireland has furthered its hatrid of paper. From 1 January 2010, the Revenue Commissioners (who are the Revenue and Customs and Excise organ of the state) commeced “Phase 2″ of mandatory eFiling. It applies to certain companies only.

But the slippery slope is here, its just a matter of time before it extends to individuals.

The Revenue Commisioners already refuse to accept cash in their offices; they only accept payment by Debit Card, Cheques (which the IPSO wants to abolish by 2016) and a Single Debit Authority or Direct Debit.

Can you see where this is headed? I can, and its a bad place.

You see eThis and eThat sounds well and good in the short term, and there will be photo opportunities, like a Minister for Finance holding a CD-ROM containing a PDF instead of a paper booklet, thats ok, thats like an eStatement, you could print itif you wanted to, but we are talking about the Revenue Commissioners here. They have huge powers, and limitless funds to hire lawyers.

What happens if they say you didn’t submit a return? What proof would you have? a paper receipt from your own printer or a screen shot of the submission page? What could would believe that, sure you could have photoshopped it yourself. The Revenue Commissioners know that paper matters. That is why for years their documents have had watermarks and UV threads.

so heres our slogan (comprised of three clichés)…
“eFiling: It’s all fun and games, until something goes wrong, then you don’t have a leg to stand on”

Irish QUANGOs enjoy their monopolies

Published January 30th, 2010 in waiting lists, applus, irish, MOT, bad customer service, sgs, the only show in town, ireland, NCTS, quango watch, irish cabinet and government. 2 Comments

In the early years of the two thousands I needed to sit a Driving Test. At the time the Dept of Transport had a monopoly on driving tests. The waiting list was about 6 months long. The Dept hada monopoly, and they knew it. It was illegal to drive without a licence, and of course insurance (which followed), so they could have the list as long as they wanted and no one could do anything.

They weren’t quite the only show in town, there were stories on the grapevine of people travelling to the UK (Northern Ireland) to sit driving tests there. They could then convert their UK licences to Irish ones in a simple quick process - although there were other stories that people actually kept their UK licences as that was a way of avoiding Irish penalty points. I love peoples ingenuity!

Well times move on and now aparently the waiting time for a  driving test in Ireland is acceptable. Well, it must be, because you don’t hear about it anymore! At the time the Minsiter didn’t do or say much publically about the waiting list. Tests have since been farmed out to a QUANGO called the RSA, so should things get bad again he can say its “not my Dept”! This of course is why Ministers create QUANGOs.

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Another QUANGO has recently begun enjoying its monopolistic position in Ireland. It is called the National Car Testing Service - or NCT (mental note: never put the word Service in the name of an organistion, it’s redundant.

Now from the tim of it’s introduction it has been mandatory to have, and of course display (a seperate legal concept), a valid NCT cert. However, the reality was that some drivers ignored the NCT and only got one when they were about to sell their car as not having an NCT decreased the price.

However, things changed on the 1st May 2009. On that date five new offences for which penalty points can be given were introduced. Those include failure to have an NCT certificate or failure to rectify a fault indentified by the NCT.

When this was announceda lot of motorists became very anxious and the NCT switchboard became jammed with enquiries, and their website went down.

Three of the new offences carry a maximum sanction of five points (too many for a what we term a “passive crime”), including failing to have an NCT up to date, an offence for which there is currently also a fine of €1,500.

The five new categories will bring to 42 the total number of penalty point offences under the system, which was introduced under the Road Traffic Act in 2002.

Now, the NCT always has a monopoly, but now that customers have to take the test, they have stopped issuing reminder letters. The NCT is run by a private sector company, and as we know from textbooks the first goal of a private sector company is make maximum profits.

My NCT disc expires next week, and I can’t get an appointment for six weeks, should I drive my car without a disc? Before if you did at least you could have aletter up your slieve showing a booking date, but now you don’t even have that.

Whats next? needing a tax clearance cert to get an NCT?

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