HMRC has come a long way since the dark days of the early part of this decade when its online filing systems went down with an alarming regularity. The consequent loss of trust and confidence were a real set back to the Government’s ambitions for more tax payers to file online.

Only by properly stress testing systems and ensuring that they were fit for purpose – the so called Carter principle - was HMRC able to work to restore this trust. This is a long and slow process and HMRC cannot afford too many problems along the way, so the latest incident is a serious setback.

HMRC needs to come clean very quickly as to what want wrong. It also needs to be explicit in what it will do to prevent such another failure. However, computer systems do sometimes fall over in spite of taking all reasonable precautions, so HMRC also needs to have a ‘Plan B’ in place to cover for such an eventuality.

If these issues are not addressed, one more failure of this nature could set the online filing project back several years. HMRC needs to learn the lessons from this latest problem and the Carter principle must be applied ruthlessly to ensure that systems are fit for purpose and thoroughly stress tested so that they don’t fall down unexpectedly, particularly on such a crucial day as 31 January.

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