Inland Revenue goes high-tech

Inland Revenue chairman, Nick Montagu, has celebrated the 200th anniversary of income tax by announcing an electronic revolution in the way Britain files its tax returns.

Montagu outlined a series of measures to streamline tax filing, from call centres to intelligent forms that taxpayers will be able to pull down off the Internet. "We're trialling an experimental call centre in East Kilbride, Scotland, which we hope will enable taxpayers to do an awful lot more of their business by phone in the way most of us do with banks. This includes things like actually being able to make a claim for a repayment of tax - legally - by telephone."

The UK government's Central IT Unit (Citu) is winding up a trial of the intelligent form, or I-form, which has been used to prove the technology and security exists to do business over the Internet. According to Microsoft's I-form project manager, Phil Stradling, even the Data Protection Registrar is now satisfied the system is secure.

Matthew Bishop, of Citu's government.direct team, said: "Citu is keen that the Inland Revenue adopt this technology as quickly as it can."

Bishop advocates a kiosk system, similar to the one being trialled by Compaq and Microsoft, that lets the user compare their current return with that for previous year. Citu expects commercial service providers to install the hardware in supermarkets, banks, and post offices.

Bishop explained that electronic signatures are now acceptable everywhere, except in circumstances where they are specifically prohibited by law. He said the UK government now needs to do "a tidy up job" to correct places where the statute books still call for written signatures.

"We think this is very close and could well start emerging this year. By 2002 we could see significant deployment," he added.

Montagu was more cautious: "The technology is basically there at the moment. It's really a question of deciding which forms it makes sense to make electronic and how soon we can put in the systems for it. I can't give a firm date but it's clearly how we see the direction for the future."