Guernsey Income Tax on the take up of its online forms

Thursday 04 February 2010

More than 1,500 people completed their Income Tax form online last year.

But Income Tax staff want to know why hundreds of people who registered to use the service did not eventually take it up.

‘We’d say our take up was reasonably successful,’ said Tania Sargent, Central Services Manager at Income Tax. ‘We had 1,644 forms completed electronically, that’s about 5% of the paper forms issued.

‘But more than 4,000 people registered to use the service and we’d like to know why so many didn’t go on to complete the form. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. We really want to encourage more people to take advantage of the online services and see the benefits we will introduce.’

The facility to complete tax returns online has been available through the States website gov.gg since January 2008. Several enhancements have been made since then following feedback from users.

The current form for 2009 income has been available since 15 January, with a new time-saving facility of ‘auto-filling’ for people who have used the service before. Information like bank accounts, mortgages and employers will be retained from the previous year’s form and automatically entered in the appropriate section. Only the monetary details will need to be added.

Income Tax is currently treating online forms as priority for processing and said that the turnaround time for assessments should be greatly improved.

In the future automatic assessments are planned, which could see forms completed online processed within two or three days, providing they meet a set criteria, which would mean a greatly improved service to the public and considerable cost saving for the States.

Anyone with queries or comments on the online returns should email eformsquery@gov.gg or call Tania Sargent or Chris Cox on 724711.