Apologies if this has been mentioned before - I haven't had time to read the whole thread right back from the start. But I've
finally managed to get into my wife's self-assessment form, after only two days of tearing at what little remains of my hair. Grrrrrr! And all because she switched her telephone provider last year.....
....Which had meant that she was forced to start using a new phone number, because her old number couldn't be ported to the new account. (Don't even ask - just
don't.
) Which meant that when the HMRC gateway was trying to send her the access code for this year, it sent it to a dead phone number
qui n'existe plus.
And if you thought that would have prompted the HMRC website to say "sorry, that isn't working, got an alternative number we can try?", you'd have won this year's GHOTY prize. (That's Gullible Hopeful Of The Year). Nope, it said, you'll need to give us your passport details, and details of any new credit agreements (she had none), or your P60 (she doesn't have one), or your state and private pension details for the year before last, to the exact last pound, and we'll chop you off at the legs if you can't guess the same figure as us within four tries.
There was, of course, an option for "
I haven't got these records, what do I do now?" Clicking on it produced two options: "
Try later" and "
Go back to the start and have another go." Neither of which seemed to answering the effing question.
Four hours of desperate drawer-rummaging later, my wife found a draft printout of last year's tax form with the pension figures on them, and we were very graciously allowed far enough into the account to propose a new phone number. And then things started to get a little easier.
......But not before I'd had to stop HMRC's attempt to automatically stop sending paper-mail notifications about important matters such as impending fines. Instead, it said, they'd be sent to my wife's HMRC account. And we were given a neat little text box to explain why we were being so obstinate?
"Because I don't effing well spend my every waking hour signed in to your diabolical Kafka website," I thundered on her behalf. "I mean, it's not exactly Facebook, is it? Logging in once a year is once a year too often, you morons, and I'll see you in hell before I jump through any more stupid hoops so that you can do less work and fine me for the pleasure of not knowing what's going on inside your cretinous little minds."
Then I deleted that and wrote "don't use the internet" instead.
BJ