[Wylug-discuss] HMRC want to see me. Can you help?

[Neil Wilson]

Hi,

This is my first post here so be gentle please!

I've been referrred by John Leach, who reckons you guys may be able to
help me. Essentially HMRC have asked me to go see them at the
beginning of May to talk about Free Software and Open Source.
Currently they have a policy goal of automating the submission of tax
records and to that end they have asked the software industry to
provide 'free' versions of their accounts software to allow smaller
operations to do their returns at no cost. This is in addition to the
current free CD and web tools that they offer. The note then
degenerated into a debate about how crippled these pieces of software
should be (including payroll software that can do the calculations but
can't print payslips!).

My response was to suggest to HMRC that they release their current
code under a Free Software licence or even Crown Copyright so that
those of us who write Free Software don't have to build yet another
payroll calculation engine from scratch and consider the needs of Free
Software when pursuing this policy. And the meeting was a response to
my suggestions.

Now this may very well be the normal civil service consultation
process where they listen to you earnestly while politely ignoring
you. Or it may be a way of getting HMRC to embrace the idea of Free
code as well as free tools. (I suspect it will be more about web
software and Linux servers than desktop.)

In the meantime have any of you any suggestions of how I should pitch
Free Software and Open Source at HMRC.? All help appreciated.

TIA

-- 
Neil Wilson
Aldur Systems