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The computer; from tool to tyrant in 1 easy step (but hope for us yet?)

  • 21-03-2010 5:11pm
    #1
    Fogmatic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,003 ✭✭✭


    In the UK, an advert in yesterday's Guardian from HM Revenue & Customs (slogan; 'tax doesn't have to be taxing'), says all businesses with £100,000 turnover now have to go online to file their tax returns.
    With a business fortunate enough to make, say, a profit of 10% of turnover, a proprieter on that threshold would have less than £200 a week to live on (let alone employ people). Can that business afford a computer? Does it need one?
    I was the office back there for a firm (in building, which is quite complex paperwork-wise). Though I already had a computer, there was no advantage in computerising anything. Even when we had 4 employees, it was more cost- and time-efficient to do their paperwork by hand, even ignoring the time & money needed for setting up computer payroll.
    That was the 1980s though, before computerisation became such a universal knee-jerk answer to everything from the powers-that-be (and meanwhile, 'Garbage in, garbage out', still holds).
    This new requirement looks to me like a government cost-cutting exercise, financed by yet another tax (in money and time) on small businesses.

    And yet... part of me hopes that the Irish government, thinking 'Ah! Foreward-looking', will rush to follow the UK's lead. Then think 'Oh. We've made a law that's impossible for some people to comply with. How do we get out of this?' Then, 'Ah. Maybe if we could just quietly make sure everyone can get internet access, preferably broadband?'.....

    In case you're a small business, I'd be as angry as you would if the Revenue did it over here (and I'm not even in business any more). I just couldn't help fantasising, having recently had a year or so of the only possible internet access being v. slow & intermittent dialup (perhaps devious governments need devious counter-measures!).


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