Another tax return fired off. The basis period for the numbers that I submitted today ended nearly six months ago, so I had to drag lots of stuff out of my records. Luckily, as long as you keep any kind of records it’s pretty easy. I had to muddle through some of the questions, but I did the same last year and it was fine.

This year I submitted online through the Inland Revenue’s web site. The site is very good. It’s clear and simple, provides pretty good navigation and lots of help. It’s very stable and thorough, no page has more than a handful of form controls on it and each page is saved as soon as you navigate to another. I did about the first section and a half ages ago and the results were waiting for me when I started up again tpday.

The only complaint I have is that there’s no indicator of where you are within a process. For example, the self-employment form had about 10 or 15 pages, but there was no indication of how many pages had been completed or remained or a navigation facility to jump to a specific page. This meant that when I got logged out automatically I had to click through six or seven pages to get to where I was. Not a big problem and about the only one.

The amount of tax I have to pay is also relaxingly low :-).

BTW, if you are wondering what you need to keep to be able to complete a return: I needed my invoices; details of expenses paid; documentation on interest from my banks; payments from my share brokers; details of charity gifts through Gift Aid and statements sent from the Inland Revenue.