Consultation overload?
May 14, 2012I see there’s a new version of the tax consultation tracker (issued on 11 May).
Now, I realise it’s a bit of a #firstworldproblem (or #myprivilegeisshowing, as they might say on twitter) but couldn’t the government be a bit more, well, helpful about this?
The tax tracker is a PDF file, so you can’t sort it by the date a consultation closes. Nor can you see how this version has changed from the one before (does anyone have the last one saved so we could have a look?) Would it be too hard to print a new tracker with a note of what has changed since the old one? Whatever happened to the government commitment to web accessibility and the desire to have triple A rating for all its websites???
There are twelve open tax consultations. There are also (I make it) no fewer than 21 formal consultations which say “to be opened in May” Blimey, guys, there are only 13 working days of May left! You’re going to be motoring a bit, aren’t you?
But, next time you update the tracker, would it hurt to ask the @HMRC account to tweet “Tracker updated with…” and, you know, tell us what’s changed???
For everybody else, follow me on @tiintax (where I tweet about tax and regulation) and I’ll do my best to poke you with what I find. But I’m not the government, and I can’t guarantee I won’t miss something.
Sigh. Another email to the Treasury:
Hi. I have been following the tax tracker with interest (I blog about it at https://tiintax.com/) and I wondered whether publishing the tracker as a pdf rather than as a searchable part of the html content of the page is in accordance with your accessibility commitments?
It would also be extremely useful if you told people how you had updated it when you DO update it. How about it?Kind regards
No answers yet, (to anything I’ve sent them) but we live in hope.
tiintax 
[…] consultations resulting from Budget announcements and pointing out that there were no fewer than 21 formal consultations which were listed on the tracker as being due to open in […]