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It never ceases to amaze me how inefficient government agencies are and their complete disregard for money. It doesn't really matter which country you're in, it's the same the world over. Complete bureaucratic bullshit!

OK, so this particular issue that's got me riled relates to the UK government. To be specific Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC). I received an email from HMRC telling me that there was a message for me on my online account. I had signed up for the green option, so would no longer get letters in the mail (something I've done with pretty much everything I can). OK, so go to the website and try to log on. Interesting, they've implemented secondary security where it sends a code to the mobile phone you have on file. Click the button, wait and ....... nothing happens.

OK, so what do you do now? Well, click the help link and it tells you to call the help desk and if you provide them with your social security number and the phone number on file, they will get you access. I tried to call the help desk and got the message “we are unable to help you at this time ... click”. Not even a queue, just straight disconnected.

Not to be deterred by a failure through the second avenue, I thought I'd try a third and sent them an email asking how I was to access the account given that I was not being sent an authorization code and when I called the help desk, nobody answered and it just disconnected. The email came back saying I needed to phone the help desk and have my National Security number with me to validate my identity. So basically some intern didn't bother to read the actual message and just cut and paste the default message. So no help there!

I tried to call a few more times and still no queue, too busy.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I tried to log in again and it sent me a code. Great! Party Time! No. I entered the code and then a message comes up "Unable to validate your identity". Please contact the help desk. Are you fucking serious?

I finally got through to the help desk today some weeks later. The IT help desk said there's nothing they can do about my issue, it's a new system they don't control and they don't know why the website is telling people to contact the help desk. They told me to call the tax office and ask them what to do as they could access my messages and let me know if there was anything critical.

I called the tax office and they said they were unable to help me and I needed to contact the IT help desk. For fucks sake! Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. The woman on this help desk at the tax office said she was cross with the woman on the other help desk for passing me off to them. She also said that because I lived overseas I couldn't file my taxes online. I pointed out that I'd been filing my taxes online since the option had been available and that the IRS mandates that I do them online being an overseas taxpayer. This seemed confusing to her, but after she researched it, she did indeed note that I had managed to process my tax return online. Unfortunately, however, she is not able to help me and has told me to call the IT help desk again.

I can only imagine the billions of pounds the government has spent on this online processing in order to have something setup that doesn't work. And the amount of money they are paying for people to sit on help desks and provide absolutely no support whatsoever.

As it stands, I have HMRC sending me urgent messages to an inbox I can't access and mandating that I complete my tax returns online on a system I can't log onto. You would have thought they'd do everything they could to take money from me to pay the morons they employ!