back to article HMRC: We 'rigorously tested' IR35 tax-check tool... but have almost nothing to show for it

The UK taxman has been slammed for a lack of transparency over the assessment of its tool to check contractors' tax status amid claims it has not retained full records of testing. HMRC created the Check for Employment Status for Tax (CEST) service in March 2017 as the government cracked down on off-payroll working rules, known …

  1. Dwarf

    Simples

    The reason is that the tool is fundamentally very simple, I understand that the source code was leaked and it contained this :

    boolean DetermineIfInsideIR35 ()

    { return true; }

    So, not much to do in terms of testing.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Simples

      Too true.

      One of my public sector customers recently decided I was inside IR 35 (I do about 10 days per year for them). I went through their list of reasons, every one was either wrong or irrelevant. I'm dreading this hitting the private sector - I'm as far outside IR35 as you can get, but worried about the cross-fire.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Simples

        >I'm as far outside IR35 as you can get

        Estonia? Liability passes to the client

  2. Trollslayer
    Flame

    I wish this was a surprise

    Unfortunately these blatant lies are no surprise, I hit the same on a project for the Prison Service.

    1. Steve K
      Coat

      Re: I wish this was a surprise

      "I hit the same on a project for the Prison Service"

      Definitely going to be "inside" there,,,

  3. Peter Galbavy

    Betcha they still allocated a few million to the testing project. Odd that, eh?

    1. goldcd

      Now that should be the next FOI request

      "How much did we pay for that page?"

  4. Chris Jasper

    Honest Guv'nor, we tested it good an' proper

  5. Adrian 4

    I used the tool when agreeing a contract with the Royal College of Art. It decided (quite correctly, given the unambiguous conditions) that I could operate as self-employed. But the RCA insist on running it as 'casual labour' anyway, presumably because the extra cost to both of us of doing that isn't worth the potential hassle if HMRC fail to keep their promise of 'standing by the results'.

    HMRC needs to be held to account for their ineptitude and FUD. No wonder nobody trusts the government.

  6. Zog_but_not_the_first
    FAIL

    Were...

    Crapita involved?

    Just askin'.

    1. Black Road Dude

      Re: Were...

      Actually it was a cap gem team. But you can hardly blame the Devs.

      1. ShandyDrinker

        Re: Were...

        Why can't you blame the devs? Have these developers got no principles or morals? They can't be naive and oblivious to the fact that they're writing a system that doesn't reflect case law or at the very least if you're going to determine someone is caught by IR35 and pays taxes of an employee, then they should get the rights of an employee.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Were...

          The devs would be coding to user stories based on acceptance criteria defined by the client. Devs are not in a position of power to assert requirements. The devs in a supplier to HMRC are there to satisfy the needs of their client and take money home to pay their mortgages. Morals are secondary, and understanding of case law way outside their pay grade. And I definitely wouldn't trust the morals of a lot of devs,. many contractors who are in the firing line for this are naive to the issues.

          1. Richocet

            Re: Were...

            Taking this right off topic: Devs who do this sort of thing should not be calling themselves engineers.

            If this was common practice in construction, we'd have bridges collapsing frequently and the engineers who designed them saying "it's not my fault, the client made me do it that way".

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Why can't you blame the devs?

          Because they might be forbidden from fixing problems they knew about, and bosses are ignoring issues getting raised, because --as the story often goes-- "there's no time-- ship it!" It looks like they just want something that appears to work. Also we have no idea how much documentation was produced and then binned.

    2. ContractorCalculator

      Re: Were...

      The developers are listed here: https://github.com/hmrc/off-payroll-decision/graphs/contributors

      1. Mike Dimmick

        Re: Were...

        That repository is informative. Looking at the unit test folder https://github.com/hmrc/off-payroll-decision/tree/master/test/uk/gov/hmrc/decisionservice/ruleengine it's clear that the software implements a rules engine. What the decision actually *is* is driven by a set of rules files.

        Those rules files are found in e.g. /conf/tables/1.5.0-final, which in turn are a translation of the Excel spreadsheets found at /docs. Looks like the civil servants update the Excel sheets, the developers transcribe them to CSV. I've done that before because Excel isn't particularly automation-friendly and end-users have a tendency to break the sheet format, breaking the importer.

        Now, there should have been some form of end-to-end testing carried out to ensure that the software does correctly implement the rules as indicated, and the results of that testing should have been documented. They may have been overconfident that the rules engine actually implements the rules correctly. None of this ensures that the rules themselves are correct - that's down to whoever's doing the spreadsheets.

        1. . 3

          Re: Were...

          There appears to be a private key in there. Nice touch!

          https://github.com/hmrc/off-payroll-decision/blob/master/conf/application.conf :45

          I do approve of the choice of tool though.

  7. adam payne

    He said that his firm had run its own test of CEST using the 24 cases listed by HMRC – which returned the wrong assessment 42 per cent of the time

    You couldn't make it up.

    How many millions to fix it then? Who's paying for it?

    1. JimboSmith

      Re: He said that his firm had run its own test of CEST using the 24 cases listed by HMRC

      Making Tax Digital....... The next HMRC disaster in the making.

    2. aks

      the taxpayer (you) always pays. who else is there?

      1. Muscleguy

        I refer you to the work of Prof Richard Murphy. It works like this, governments with fiat currencies create money and then spend it in the economy, they get it back via taxes. The taxes don't pay for anything, the money creation does.

        BTW under this understanding deficits for fiat governments are good because they represent money out there in the economy. Governments who balance the books or run a surplus are bad because that represents govt taking money out of the economy.

        Which is part of why Norway squirrels its oil money away in its Sovereign Wealth Fund with strict rules around what the income from it can be used for and the Norwegian govt runs a sensible deficit.

        Most people's understandings of tax stem from the days of the gold standard and monetary control and they no longer apply under a fiat currency.

        This does not mean govts can just create lots of money with no consequences. The UK govt's quantitative easing dropped the value of the pound significantly. Since they had nothing to turn around the UK's large current account deficit this fuelled inflation as imports cost more which was not countered by greater export earnings as the economy was depressed by witless austerity.

        Interest rates are so low those buying gilts for security are effectively paying HMG for the privilege. When such situations pertain you borrow to invest to boost the economy. Instead we have austerity.

        1. Wibble

          > austerity....

          Of course the side effect of increasing inflation is it devalues debt over time and the decrease in the pound makes imports more expensive thus rationing them.

          The alternative to 'austerity' is what exactly? Continue to spend...? Sure, they could spend on capital projects, but we'd all be raped by Crapita, incompetence and bloody-minded short-termism.

          You didn't mention the sainted Jeremy BTW... Is it just me who thinks Jezza has more than a passing resemblence to Davros, especially when he's doing PM's questions, Theresa's winding him up and he sounds just like like Davros too.

  8. Nolveys
    Meh

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    1. sysconfig

      Re: High Quality Test Software Of High Quality

      With the current government you have better chances of getting the contract, if you haven't even got a computer or skills at all. (see Seaborne Freight debacle)

    2. 's water music

      Re: High Quality Test Software Of High Quality

      upvoted for not having added a 'joke alert' icon to this short documentary

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    FTFY

    "HMRC is setting itself up for a colossal fall and more worryingly will be playing havoc with the livelihoods of thousands of hard-working freelance professionals that have been avoiding paying the correct tax for years," he said.

    1. Electronics'R'Us
      FAIL

      Re: FTFY

      Citation needed.

      The extra tax HMRC want (but are usually not entitled to) is the liability of the hirer, not the contractor (do try to keep up). Contractors with their own companies pay broadly the same percentage of income in taxes as regular employees anyway.

      Yes, we get paid more on many (although definitely not all) occasions, but then we don't get paid holiday, sick time or other employee protections. Contractors are often a far more efficient use of company money as we get pulled in for a specific job for a relatively short amount of time and a full time employee would actually cost a company more money.

      1. aks

        Re: FTFY

        We also rarely get paid at the end of the month. 90 days anyone:?

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: FTFY

      @A/C

      I take it you don't work freelance yourself. Why not? Are you too moral to undertake what you consider to be a tax fiddle? Do you think you're not good enough? Or is it just too much for your risk appetite but still haven't worked out that the risk factor is why it should be treated as a business and not employment?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: FTFY

        For brevity original @A/C - twunt!

    3. Addanc

      Re: FTFY

      The Conservative motto "Do as I say not as I do"

      Philip Hammond's company paid just £5964 corporation tax on $1.6M profit; I have paid more corporation tax each year on a fraction of the turnover; what was that about avoiding paying the correct tax each year?

      https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-6585187/Hypocrite-Chancellors-firm-pays-paltry-tax-bill-Hammond-tells-web-giants-pay-fair-share.html

      1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

        Re: FTFY

        I read the article.

        If it's purely that took advantage of an aspect of the tax law that allows them to balance profits in one year against losses in another, I have no issue with that - it's an entirely fair law in my opinion. It sounds like they've done something more than that - there's a claimed £1.6m profit over 8 years, but how that's been managed I don't know. If it's been reinvested into the group, well, there you go.

        Not one for defending Hammond, but there's a marked difference between a relatively small UK based construction company that makes a profit some years and a loss in others managing it's taxes, and a massive multi-national essentially buying its way out of the tax system by funnelling all the profit to a country where they've negotiated a sweetheart deal.

        1. aks

          Re: FTFY

          Them's the rules. You follow the rules they set, not the rules you think they should be applying.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: FTFY

        From the article: "appears to have taken advantage of rules that legally allow firms to minimise tax bills when their profits are unpredictable."

        Unpredictability of profits is what business is all about. That's why business income is treated differently to PAYE on a regular job but as the above furniture item says, the rules I'm aware of wouldn't account for what the article says. Unfortunately it doesn't spell out what rules were used.

  10. alain williams Silver badge

    It seems government is as bad as corporations

    when in comes to trying to screw over the public.

    In other news: Home office & Windrush; ...

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: It seems government is as bad as corporations

      As bad? Don't forget governments have years more experience at this than mere corporations.

      1. DCFusor

        Re: It seems government is as bad as corporations

        "As bad? Don't forget governments have years more experience at this than mere corporations."

        And enforcers, and jails and....

        When ${BIG_CORP} employees show up at my door demanding I pay tribute, I can "stand my ground" and use hot lead if required. Not so much the guys with badges. Who can also simply garnish your bank account.

    2. veti Silver badge

      Re: It seems government is as bad as corporations

      The incentives are fundamentally different. The private sector is motivated by money: anything that increases one's wealth is, by definition, good and correct.

      The public sector is mostly motivated by laziness,hence "pretending to have done testing" beats "actually doing testing" every time.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Where do I start?

    Here's a relatively trivial exercise for a developer: Write a Cucumber test that implement the journey through CEST, then configure it with a number of test cases that have the answers that would have been provided for every case that has ever been through court. Cucumber is used extensively on government projects, I've been there and done that in at least two departments in the last three years. If you have already set up a Cucumber test framework, implemented some Cucumber tests (on pretty much any level) and have automated the running of those tests in CI/CD it is at most a week or two's work. Once. To have a set of test cases that can be run at will to demonstrate compliance with requirements.

    To claim you've kept no evidence of testing is not credible. If a developer said there was no way he could prove his software met requirements to my face I'd laugh long and hard and then tell him to go back and do his job properly. Evidence of automated testing (at every level from unit through to smoke) from CI/CD is how modern projects are delivered. Including everything HMRC has done for at least the last three years.

    For HMRC to say this, well... they're actually talking to the people who do this day in day out for a living. Credibility drops through the floor at this point (assuming it was above the floor to start with, hardly a given here). How exactly did they satisfy themselves that their subcontractor delivered a system that worked as they wanted it to? And still does? Total crap.

    HMRC don't want evidence of testing because it would stop them repeating the complete rubbish that it provides "accurate results". After all, when it ignores mutuality of obligation how can it be accurate? And if they are forced to admit that the tool is flawed, and maybe even have to fix it, they've just had their enforcement baseball bat taken out of their hands.

    1. ContractorCalculator

      Re: Where do I start?

      What, you mean, do things properly, as any decent software engineer would do? Crazy talk!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No tests?

    Certainly looks like there might be some tests/a spec...

    https://github.com/hmrc/off-payroll-decision/tree/master/test/resources

  13. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "determining IR35 status from the employee to the employer."

    The terminology seems to be assuming the outcome.

    1. Richocet

      I agree. Ever since I worked in the UK IT industry 20 years ago the HRMC assumption is that all sole-trader contractors are only doing it to avoid tax.

      However they are doing the same sorts of work as the bigger IT outsourcing operators and consultancies who never get questioned about their IR35 tax status. It is massive hypocrisy.

      So either do HRMC staff either have no idea of what IT contractors actually do (probably) or are they just going after easy targets?

      1. Franco Bronze badge

        "However they are doing the same sorts of work as the bigger IT outsourcing operators and consultancies who never get questioned about their IR35 tax status. It is massive hypocrisy."

        It certainly is. When IR35 was introduced (supposedly, I.e. we were told) it was to prevent companies (note, not individuals) doing exactly what the BBC have done, yet BBC presenters who have evidence that they were told work through a PSC or you're fired are getting hauled in to the courts and the BBC are sitting down with HMRC over tea and biscuits and discussing what to do.

        Very glad to see that several MPs are very aggressively questioning both sides (HMRC and BBC) behaviour over that one.

  14. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "El Reg asked for clarification as to whether there have been further tests since the 24 cases mentioned, or whether the test results simply weren't recorded. We have yet to receieve a response."

    Just ask them if they've any evidence that any testing took place.

  15. Nematode

    HMRC simply do not care

  16. Shadow Systems

    Please forgive what may be a silly question...

    If a person takes the exact same data & inputs it into the HMRC site to determine if they are (not) required to pay that tax, and they do the data entry a dozen times, can they record the answers they get & present the sites own inability to give the same answer to the same data as evidence the site is unfit for purpose?

    If the site gives you anything other than the exact same answer to the exact same data every single time, then the site can't be relied upon to determine if a person has to pay or not.

    Could you then present said evidence to the HMRC tax goons & say "Until you can figure out your own rules, you can stick your head in a pig if you think I'll pay this shite."?

    Or is that just wishful thinking on my part? If so then I wholeheartedly humbly & sincerely apologize for my Reality Cheque having bounced. =-J

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Please forgive what may be a silly question...

      How expensive a QC can you afford?

    2. d3vy

      Re: Please forgive what may be a silly question...

      I dont think that the issue is that it gives different answers to the same input... Though it is in beta and is being changed so its possible you would get different answers from day to day... Hopefully getting more accurate...

      The problem as I understand it is more that the answers it gives dont fit in with the current law.

      For example, if you take a IR35 investigation which went to court and which HMRC lost and enter the details/work conditions/contractual obligations of the plaintiff into CEST you would expect the outcome to be inline with the finding of the court - this is not the case.

  17. Rasslin ' in the mud
    Coat

    To paraphrase an advertising meme...

    What goes into CEST stays in CEST.

    I'm leaving now.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This call has not been recorded...

    HMRC's blurb stated that output from the IR35 calculator was not saved as it was a guide. But in fact it was, so HMRC could subsequently show fine tuning used to obtain a 'not employee' result.

  19. Gordan
    Coat

    What a CEST pool...

    Already getting my coat...

  20. Cju657arh

    Obvs this gonna happen if it was written by contractors...

  21. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Trollface

    The only way is BREXIT!

    the taxman said the CEST rules were "developed in a workshop" and the only documented output was those rules.

    The same methodology used for BREXIT related tasks by departments across government

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: The only way is BREXIT!

      The same methodology used for BREXIT related most tasks by departments across government.

      FTFY

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No documentation

    Ah reminds me of other government areas including local councils. Rushing into a digital program with a low code app that no one has heard of. Hardly released any apps with it and due to "agile" working there is pretty much no documentation. There is a small amount telling you what an app does but not what the code does or test results.

    Its being kept quiet as it can't been seen to fail and the local councillors who approved it and were lead to believe it would save money (it hasn't and won't) want to be re-elected.

  23. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    This online process was designed to squeeze more cash out of contractors ...

    No. It was designed to get them to pay their fair share, just like the rest of us. Stop whining and pay up, you greedy, selfish, antisocial fuckers.

    1. d3vy

      Ian - Actually out of the two of us I think you'll find you are the one paying less ££ tax.

      Also, Ill bet in the last year you had at least one sick day? Holiday? Pension contribution matched by your employer (come to think of it Ill bet your pension contributions come out of your gross pay... nice little tax dodge there).

      Ill bet you expect your employer to pay you for public holidays too.. Getting paid for days that your not working? You absolute fucking scrounger.

      See. Works both ways.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      I repeat the questions I posed to the A/C above.

      I take it you don't work freelance yourself. Why not? Are you too moral to undertake what you consider to be a tax fiddle? Do you think you're not good enough? Or is it just too much for your risk appetite but still haven't worked out that the risk factor is why it should be treated as a business and not employment?

  24. romanempire
    FAIL

    CEST is fundamentally flawed because....

    It wilfully ignores the relevant case law:-

    Hall v Lorimer (Court of Appeal November 1993)

    In arriving at the decision Mummery J said:

    ‘In order to decide whether a person carries on business on his own account it is necessary to consider many different aspects of that person’s work activity. This is not a mechanical exercise of running through items on a check list to see whether they are present in, or absent from, a given situation. The object of the exercise is to paint a picture from the accumulation of detail. The overall effect can only be appreciated by standing back from the detailed picture which has been painted, by viewing it from a distance and by making an informed, considered, qualitative appreciation of the whole. It is a matter of evaluation of the overall effect of the detail, which is not necessarily the same as the sum total of the individual details. Not all details are of equal weight or importance in any given situation. The details may also vary in importance from one situation to another.’

    Its a 'qualitative' (as opposed to a 'quantitative') exercise so is probably very difficult (if not impossible) to capture in an algorithm. But in any case for HMRC its just window dressing. They just want everyone on PAYE.

    P.

    (BTW I hate the new Reg design. I'm down from several visits daily to once a week.)

    1. a pressbutton
      Pint

      Re: CEST is fundamentally flawed because....

      sir, have my upvote for

      (BTW I hate the new Reg design. I'm down from several visits daily to once a week.)

  25. Franco Bronze badge

    "As CEST is a tool for guidance purposes, and not a transactional service, a GDS assessment was not appropriate,"

    Only an HMRC spokesman could say that with a straight face, when they have consistently said they will stand by CEST decisions and are launching legal action based on it.

    BTW a small clarification is that the decision on inside/outside is not necessarily made by the employer, the definition is that the engager makes the decision which is likely to be a recruitment agency in the majority of cases.

    I see as usual for every story about contractors we get the usual assortment of AC trolls, for their benefit Contractors != tax dodgers. Yes, there are some who take the piss but that's the case in every walk of life, just ask your local MP for their expense claims for example.

    1. d3vy

      Yes, it would in many cases be the recruitment agency - however working practices normally trump whats in the contract so the end client would need to be involved too.

      I can see one of two things happening:

      1. Agents play it safe and everyone is inside...

      1a. Rates go up (As happened with public sector)

      1b. Contractors leave and clients struggle to complete projects (as happened with public sector)

      1c. Contractors go back to perm work (See 1b - but also HMRC take decreases because permies dont gross as much)

      2. Clients and agents change contracts and working practices so that contractors are not inside IR35... Nothing much changes.

      Its probably going to end up somewhere in the middle of the two...

      1. Franco Bronze badge

        The "decision" has to be made before recruitment though, without considering working practices which only come in to play once someone is in the role and/or HMRC dip their wick in.

        A certain large recruitment firm, who I won't name and shame unless they keep it up, is no longer putting inside or outside IR35 in their job adverts, and is also being rather aggressive in telling people how foolish they think you are when you tell them not interested and wouln't have applied if you had put inside IR35 in the advert.

        It probably will shake out somewhere in the middle of your options, however I can also see that lobbying against IR35 reform will get a lot more aggressive as well when all of the large outsourcing companies lose their ability to attract contractors as well, or at the very least have their margins cut a lot finer as rates go up.

        1. Lost it

          This seems to be a norm...

          I've done CEST, and it says I'm freelance. And I've just been told by an agency that "The client decides how he is going to treat you, and if he says it's inside IR35 you have no choice". I said, as you can imagine... Yes I have a choice. Tell them I don't want the job...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Comment on 1c

        ... also worth mentioning, when going back to permanent employment for large multinational consultancies - these companies tend to be taxed in the UK.

        Deloitte, Atos, Capgemini, Atkins, HPE, Accenture to name a few. I could be wrong, but I assume the profits are taxed outside the UK

  26. Phil Endecott

    I’d love to see some examples of cases where he says the tool gets the wrong answer.

    I had a play with the site a while ago, after one of the stories here, and it basically seemed to do the right thing for “obvious” cases.

    I think the “testing” issue is a red herring. I doubt that something as simple as this would not be doing what it was supposed to do. It’s just a website that asks questions and does no more than about 10 lines of logic to work out the answer. It seems more likely to me that this Chris Chaplin has entered details of somewhat borderline cases where he disagrees with HMRC about what the outcome should be, and predictably the tool has told him what HMRC thinks, not what he thinks.

    1. Franco Bronze badge

      HMRC's testing is probably, much like their example documentation, grossly skewed in favour of inside scenarios. We already know that the tool does not take Mutuality of Obligation into account at all, yet has been a major factor in pretty much every case that has ever reached the courts.

    2. ContractorCalculator

      My name is Dave Chaplin, not Chris. I spent hours presenting the entire testing research to the National Audit Office, which formed part of their reporting into the BBC mess. We did a bit more than just play with the site. We hired lawyers and ex tax inspectors and went through hundreds of pages of legal cases, and put them through the tool, producing 511 pages of evidence. The research and conclusions were published in the public domain as part of a whitepaper on the CEST tool. Journalists, like Rebecca Hill, also do their own due diligence before writing their articles. She has all the evidence too. When you have gone to the same lengths as us, please come back and publish your evidence and let us know where you think we went wrong.

      1. Lost it

        Too simple?

        I've always thought if the company/person I'm working for can say to me "Right we don't want you after today" you are basically on a zero hours contract. I'm in a business where that can happen, either way. I can tell the person paying my wages I'm not coming back or that employer can tell me to not come back.

        So I'm a temporary worker. How can I possibly be under IR35?

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why is IR35 a thing

    Simply because what used to be employees and employers are knowingly avoiding paying the tax associated with employment.

    There have always been what I will call "external experts" these are people who are brought in to deal with the ~10% of work that "standard" employees cannot/will not do. They were normally called in when that ~10% of work built up to the point where it was effecting the employers 90% completion rate, thus they may pick up a contract with more than a years worth of ~10% but they were never part of the management structure nor would they stay for years at the same company (once the accumulated ~10%. is cleared then they move on)

    IR35 is punishing the "external expert" without dealing with the "employer" bringing in people as contractors when they are acting as staff.

    If they really want to get rid of the employment tax dodgers and restore contractors to being "external experts" then you have to hit the source via taxing the "employer" to the point were bringing in staff as contractors is no longer viable.

    Random tax slap downs do not stop the employers since they effectively have nothing to loose and so they will continue to promote employees pretending they are contractors.

    So why is HMRC only targetting the "contractors"? it clearly isn't in an attempt to hit the tax dodgers since the companies bringing in the "contractors" is held blameless.

    For my part the responsibility for employing staff as contrators lies squarely at the employer's door and if you are going to taxslap anyone then the employer should be first.

    If you want to spot the employees pretending to be contrators then take their income and if it is not atleast triple the "standard employee" wage with all associated taxes added on then the employer and the bogus contractor are tax dodging. That's a nice easy calculation and something that would take an hour at most to code into a web app

  28. Big_Boomer

    Typical

    Chances are that HMRC hired a contractor to create CEST, but as usual decided to terminate their contract early due to some utterly irrelevant government initiative, and so ended up with nobody who understood the software, how to use it, or even exactly what it was intended for.

    But, because some bureaucrats job is now on the line (the one who used that government initiative to get rid of the contractor and make it look like they were saving the taxpayer some money) it got released as a Beta even though it is probably not even at first Alpha stage. One of the many reasons I won't work with public sector entities any more.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There is absolutely no chance there are no test cases and results.

    I work for a large UK govt body and have done on and off for the last 16 years as a contractor and supplier.

    There is zero chance that these test cases and their results do not exist. Zero. Zilch. Nil points.

    We would not get paid if the systems was not tested and the results recorded. It didn't matter if it was as a large supplier or in house as a contractor.

    I know where all the tests done are for all the systems going back 10 years as they are recorded. They have to be recorded as that was a condition of going live.

    Somebody somewhere is lying through their teeth...

  30. Ken 16 Silver badge
    Trollface

    Duties and Tariffs calculator?

    I'm sure they've documented the full test criteria and results for the new post-Brexit Duites and Tariffs calculator, covering goods and services from March?

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