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The UK government's Low Value Purchase System is a waste of time
- toyg 4mo agoThey should just have a "suspend account" option. You file a nil return once, suspend, never come back unless you have to. Seems easy enough.
- jodrellblank 4mo agoSo next month and all future months when the government has something it might buy from you, and you would like to sell to them, and you suspended your account telling them that they can’t, so they buy it elsewhere, then what?
- toyg 4mo agoObviously you could unsuspend it at any time and report as necessary. That's what "suspended" means, as opposed to "closed" or "terminated". Come on.
- jodrellblank 4mo ago"Come on" what? You suspend your account - you tell the government they cannot buy from you - but you still want to sell to them. So at what "any time" are you suggesting people unsuspend it? a) immediately, so it's always unsuspended, leaving you back in the original position. b) you hope that after telling the government they cannot buy from you, they contact you to ask you to unsuspend your account so they can buy from you, then you login and unsuspend it, then they buy from you, then you login to report that purchase, and suspend your account again. This doesn't sound like less timewasting.
- toyg 4mo agoYou're suspending the reporting of your dealings, which implies you've done no business in the previous period. When you do business, you unsuspend and report. I think you might want to step away from the keyboard for a bit.
- happy7awake 4mo ago[flagged]
- happy7awake 4mo ago[flagged]
- midomody 4mo ago[flagged]
- solenoid0937 4mo agoGovernment employees and departments need performance incentives. And not ones that are so far removed from their day-to-day as "voting."
- morgan_stanly 4mo ago[flagged]
- hennell 4mo agoObviously far less - it's 3 mins per person, but you can stop 20 seconds in if it's not relevant to you so those of us who read it all probably don't consider the time wasted. Also you're not forced to come back and read it again every month which is the real problem.
- simonw 4mo agoI'd like a refund on the time I spent reading your comment.
- lowercased 4mo agoMy spouse did business at a collector show in Illinois years ago. We filed some sales tax thing, as we collected sales tax (as we were told to do) and remitted it. Did that for... 2 years, IIRC, then didn't do that show again. We got letters threatening that we would be penalized if we didn't fill out the form and remit our collected tax. There was no option to say 'nothing'. I mean... we did one year - put 0. Then we stopped the business. Had multiple emails, physical letters, and hours on the phone being bounced around between places to say "we don't run the business any more - we're not operating". And... no one seemed to have a way to decidedly stop these. We'd get "OK" then... 6 months later got a letter saying "you owe $x and penalties for failing to file"... I was slightly concerned about driving through Illinois at some point, thinking they might have an arrest warrant out for one of us. It took 2 years of not getting these to finally believe we're not in their system any more. Similar story for New Jersey, but it wasn't quite as bad. Still required a lot of manual work.
- elAhmo 4mo agoYou can't just start collecting sales tax before registering with the state, and likewise to stop collecting you need to deregister. It is a fairly standard procedures every accountant is aware of.
- lowercased 4mo agoSure you can. It's what we as vendors were told to do by the show organizers. They told us the rates to collect and gave us info as to how/where to remit the money. States absolutely would take the money.
- hilariously 4mo agoHuh, in my state the secretary of state is where you register a business, and you just go to the website and click "this is no longer operating" and then they stop sending you letters to file your 0 taxes.
- amluto 4mo ago
- philipwhiuk 4mo agoI think "machine readable" in UK government parlance might just mean 'not hard copy' but I'm not 100%.
- Closi 4mo agoTheir medium value purchase system is a waste of time too - I work for a small business that does government contracts and you have to pay the government just for the pleasure of bidding for contracts. Then every bid has it's own unique weird things, where often you are told who you are bidding against and sometimes even how much the government wants to pay! The scorecards are often weird, will do things like ask you to write mini-essays with word limits where you get penalised for being over the word count, or where 20% of the bid points are based on a combination of diversity and impact on the local community/environment rather than on who will do the job best at the lowest price. The entire process is completely broken, and has no reference to good/standard procurement processes in the private sector.
- cjbgkagh 4mo agoI had an invitation to bid on a government contract that needed local diversity certifications that would cost a bunch of money just to apply. They also had a scale down provision to basically nothing so even if we won there is no guarantee that the contract would cover the cost of certifications. We have list pricing so they wanted us to jump through these hoops and still give them the standard rate. We passed, but if this is our future we’ll have to stop doing list pricing and start charging 5x to 10x extra to cover the hassle of dealing with them.
- tardedmeme 4mo agoNow you know why government contracts are so expensive. They have to be, to cover the costs of dealing with the government. It's not wrong to over-quote a shitty customer by an amount that'd make you willing to deal with their shittiness. That's totally fine on your part actually, since either they take the bid and you make money, or they don't and you don't have to deal with them.
- cjbgkagh 4mo agoWe do list pricing to cut down on marketing costs. Many tenders disallow increasing the price of deliverables over list pricing (it’s an automatic disqualification). You can’t throw in extra stuff either as they reserve the right to remove specific line items after awarding the tender. They write the rules to benefit themselves. The only way I can increase prices is if I stop having an advertised price and go to a pure ‘contact us for pricing’ model. I can either be mass market at commodity prices or I can target governments at inflated costs but I can’t do both. We’re the last hold out in my niche and eventually we will have to leave the commodity market.
- fg137 4mo ago> So the GCA are wasting everyone's time and do not track how annoying it is. I am 80% sure that someone is aware how much waste there is, but nobody wants to / is able to change the process. Just like many other organizations.
- petcat 4mo agoI think civic workers are generally aware of how much waste exists in their departments, but what is the motivation to change it? Any attempt at "efficiency" could very well backfire and mean the end of their own job.
- vablings 4mo agoFor most civic workers menial tasks are the bane of their existence. You are not going to get fired for doing your job correctly
- rcxdude 4mo agoI think if anyone's tracking, this specific example is so far down the list it's not worth thinking about. 2 days total effort per month? That's peanuts for waste in most organisations, let alone government.
- RobotToaster 4mo agoThe ridiculous system of "you have to tell us you've done nothing" seems endemic in the UK government.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- wubblewobble 4mo agoNon-governmental, but the whole TV licensing thing is similarly annoying too. Lots of abusive threatening letters pushing you to declare that you don't watch live TV or use iPlayer, and if you do declare that, then they conveniently forget after 2 years anyway, and start harassing you anew :/
- awjlogan 4mo agoI'm don't think it's ridiculous - it's simply a positive acknowledgement you've seen the message, even if there's no action required. The alternative would be repeated reminders until some timeout. I would imagine that timeout might come with an enforcement order, even if you have nothing to declare.
- IshKebab 4mo agoNo it makes perfect sense. Otherwise you'd have to endlessly deal with people who "forgot" to tell you they'd done something. The main problems are a) logging into gov.uk to do it is endlessly tedious, and b) monthly?? I thought all the childcare reconfirmations and security questions were bad enough.
- traceroute66 4mo agoThis blog post title would be better worded "small business owner is surprised by contract term he signed up for". I mean, it does say it right there in black and white in the Supplier Contract that he signed up for .... Section 3 CCS - Supplier contract, Reporting Period: "The Supplier must complete an MI Report and return it to CCS by the fifth Working Day of every month during the Term and thereafter until all transactions relating to any Buyer Contract have permanently ceased. If at any point there is a period of a month where no reportable transactions occur, then the Supplier must make a declaration to CCS confirming no business has been conducted, in place of data submission." I know, to quote the author, "It can be hard running a small business.". But surely at least make an effort to read contracts you sign up to ?
- simonw 4mo agoAt no point did the author suggest that small businesses were surprised by this requirement - just that it's pointless bureaucracy, which it is. And that's especially ironic since the whole point of the "Low Value Purchase System" is to make selling to government less time-consuming for small businesses!
- traceroute66 4mo ago> At no point did the author suggest that small businesses were surprised by this requirement - just that it's pointless bureaucracy, which it is. Well, they are complaining about having to login monthly to file a zero report. Yes, I agree its bureaucratic, but that's no excuse for not reading the damn contract ! If they read the contract they signed up to, perhaps they would have decided "fuck that" and not bothered signing up in the first place. P.S. Reading contracts is a good thing, because I bet this guy also missed all the juicy indemnity and liability clauses, some of which are unlimited for "interesting" things such as unlimited indemnity for third-party Intellectual Property claims against the government related to what you supplied them: 10.5 If any claim is made against CCS for actual or alleged infringement of a third party’s intellectual property arising out of, or in connection with, the supply or use of the Offered Deliverables (an "IPR Claim"), then the Supplier indemnifies CCS against all losses, damages, costs or expenses (including professional fees and fines) incurred as a result of the IPR Claim.
- CM30 4mo agoWhy doesn't it just default to "no purchase" if the user doesn't do anything? Logically you'd think this sort of system would only make you log in and do anything if there was anything to report. Why was it designed the way described in the article to begin with?
- lbriner 4mo agoI assume they have no way to track your sales back to this system via whoever else in government you sold to. Defaulting to "nothing" is not reliable because maybe you did and they want to know whether this whole thing is really making any difference. I think the correct way would be a one-click link in an email though!
- krisbolton 4mo agoIt'll be a legal thing. You're reporting on behalf of yourself / a legal entity, so another system or entity can't say for you. I get it, but it really is a waste of time.
- wolfi1 4mo agogovernment people think in forms, I guess this was originally a paper form you had to submit signed via mail (not email). their logic is that they have to have something signed so they can hold you liable if something is wrong or even fraudulent. when you don't submit they won't know if you forgot or really didn't have any business. they could of course design the system a bit more user friendly but knowing government agencies that means it would involve some highly paid consultants working for several years with an even more hostile user interface
- IshKebab 4mo agoBecause then you don't have the "I forgot" excuse.
- willtemperley 4mo agoJust an anecdote on UK local government tech incompetence: I received a ticket “Failing to comply with a prohibition on certain types of vehicle” from Hackney council. Initially I thought my car had been cloned as I haven’t driven for months, but either a person or an AI had misread my car number plate. It was all just such a waste of time, especially navigating the Ai designed to annoy you into paying.
- willtemperley 4mo agoAddendum: The really annoying part was when the AI asked me for my ticket number, then asked me for the two digit contravention code. First, surely they know the contravention code because they gave me the ticket?! Second, the two digit contravention code was actually a part of a three digit alphanumeric code found in this sentence "52m Failing to comply with a prohibition". Welcome to the future.
- nickdothutton 4mo ago"The system is working as intended". I once attended an official seminar given by the government procurement department, to an audience of (mostly) government department people with purchase authority. The subject of which was how to construct your invitations to tender such that only the largest 3-4 suppliers could possibly respond. "Solves the problem of having to consider 20-30 suppliers and review their submissions". I'm so glad that was early on in my career (as a vendor).
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoApproaching 20yr ago now I sat through a training on the state automotive inspection license for reasons have to do with software that ran it. Slide 1ish: State cares about emissions, take it very seriously if you want to keep your license. Slide 2ish: State gives no fucks either way about "safety" inspections, they don't affect squat and aren't worth the money so far as our studies and stats can tell Slide 3ish: If it wasn't obvious, "safety" is your blank check to sell work and in return the state expects you to take emissions seriously. The rest of the slides were technicalities and requirements and the final slide was a recap of 1-3. I too am glad I was exposed to such things early on.
- pessimizer 4mo agoI worked for the state and had to participate in procurement. Not only did they do this, but when we were purchasing commonly available things, we purchased them from weird insider vendors whose catalogs were literally photocopies of other catalogs with the prices blacked out. When I left, people were advising me to become a vendor, which was what a lot of people did as a retirement plan. You'd go to the secret portal and fill out the inscrutable forms, then give them to someone who you probably knew at the special time. Then the state would order things from you, and you would simply order them from Amazon or Uline or whatever. There was also a trade in minority and female figureheads (to white male businesses) to get you prioritized.
- rwmj 4mo agoSo much UK govt bureaucracy could be removed. Like tax returns - they have the data already, just send me a bill, and let me query it if I disagree (like it works in other European countries). Or Making Tax Digital, which incredibly is worse than the previous system. Or VAT registration/returns which my partner has to do, which overlap with MTD and acts like a kind of second tax system.
- nickdothutton 4mo agoYou are going to love Digital VAT, closely followed by Real-Time VAT.
- gambiting 4mo agoI mean, 90% of employees on the UK(I imagine it's probably 99%) don't ever have to file any taxes - it's all done automatically through PAYE. Only in certain specific circumstances you need to file a self assessment. So yes, I sympathise with the administrative burden for UK businesses, but for employees the system is basically better than almost anywhere else in the world.
- pixelesque 4mo agoWhy are people down-voting this? It's generally correct: If you're self-employed / sole trader and operating outside IR-35, there's no way the HMRC can know how much you were paid as they don't have the info, so they can't know how much tax you owe. In other situations for payrole / salary (like PAYE for example) they do have the info, as companies have to submit it, so generally people in those situations don't have to submit tax returns (unless they have significant capital gains). I do think it's a bit annoying you have to declare tax on interest since 2016 if it's over £1000 - previously banks would take it out automatically, and this is still done in other countries (NZ for example).
- alibarber 4mo agoDon’t let facts get in the way of a good narrative it seems.
- mft_ 4mo agoEh, I was expecting something far worse from the title. Once a month, an email reminds you to click on a provided link, log in (via saved credentials, one assumes?) and click a single button? I get that it's small frustration, but I suspect there are far more egregious administration inefficiencies in the world of government than this. (You should try living/working in Germany ;) ) Also to note, the title is a vast overstatement, but I guess "The monthly reporting requirements of the UK Government's Low Value Purchase System is a very minor waste of time, on some occasions" isn't quite so catchy.
- em-bee 4mo agoin a way i like the system in china. they simply force you to use their software to print invoices or receipts on government supplied numbered invoice paper, which automatically reports every sale. if there is no sale you don't need to do anything, because it's practically not possible to make a sale without printing a receipt and have it reported. for end consumer sales for a while the receipt paper had a scratch field where you could win something. this was to encourage consumers to demand the receipt. they obviously didn't trust you to self report accurately, but this also reduces the friction, because i don't even need to bother making any reports. i don't think my accountant needs to do anything either. they have access to the same system and probably just verify that i didn't misfile or forget something. of course apart from the printed receipts everything is digital.
- Scoundreller 4mo agoRestaurants in Quebec are similar: forcibly integrated into a provincial sales tax system and part of your receipt has some government segment. Largely because unscrupulous restaurants had, I think they were called “zippers” to perma-erase revenue/transactions. Some EU countries did a “if you don’t get a receipt, you don’t have to pay”, which erased the concept of a bar tab. During a drinking session with friends, you’d end up with a stack of receipts to pay as you got a receipt with each beer request. Income taxes are a similar idea: employer pays on your behalf and then you do some manual or virtually automatic reconciliation at the end of the year. Canada is pretty much the latter where the gov already has all the info and you can import it into your tax software where most people don’t have to change anything. I dunno why countries like sales taxes but low tariffs. Would be easier to tariff imports at a small number of points and let everything internal run free. Why have sales tax on local production. The more “tax points” you create, the harder it’s going to be to enforce it all.
- em-bee 4mo agotariffs wouldn't capture anything locally produced.
- rapidaneurism 4mo ago
- m463 4mo agoThis reminds me of the terry gilliam movie Brazil, with dystopian bureaucracy...
- copium 4mo agoI work in UK Government and the problem is that procurement depts are so afraid of awarding tenders to dodgy suppliers they add so many layers of bureaucracy that it prevents local or more innovative contractors. The rules are much more flexible for low value tenders <£30k but it is a very exclusionary system. Please realise there are many civil servants and local government officers that realise the system is overly bureaucratic and are encouraging procurement teams to change their processes, but it is mostly dictated by national legislation. I think allowing mayoral authorities to flex their procurement systems for innovative solutions would be a good testing ground. The whole point of devolution is to allow areas to spend money locally how they see fit and it can become a bit of a laboratory for new, risky ideas that - if they pay off - can be copied by other places.
- ksec 4mo agoI don't think it will change even with devolution. Given enough time it will certainly be back to where they were. Every single time they replace an old system with something else they all manage to add additional complicity. Don't know if you get to use HERA in your department but it is a complete pile of mess.
- SoftTalker 4mo ago> procurement depts are so afraid of awarding tenders to dodgy suppliers they add so many layers of bureaucracy that it prevents local or more innovative contractors a/k/a regulatory capture. Large established vendors can afford the staffing to deal with this, small startups either cannot or they miss an obscure step in the process and they are excluded.
- Closi 4mo agoYes - the legislation itself needs ripped up and replaced with common sense procurement that follows industry norms. As someone who bids for these contracts, my outsider view of the procurement process is that it seems to spends so much time and effort being fair and impartial, that it actually ends up: * Giving too much information to suppliers (i.e. who else is bidding and how much the government will pay) - These things are never given in private sector contracts but you are often told with a public sector procurement process. * Being a checkbox excercise, with scorecard criteria that can tip the balance that don't have anything to do with how well the company actually does the job. * The procurement process itself can say to companies 'we are hard to deal with, uncooperative and don't really know what we want', which will obviously influence pricing. I've seen tender documents say silly things like you will be disqualified if you can't make an in-person meeting about the tender given 24 hours notice. Tender documents often contain 49 pages of waffle and almost zero specification of what is actually expected to be delivered (while this is common in the private sector too, it's much worse in the public sector in terms of how poorly defined tenders are). * Often they have classic procurement footguns, like mandating cost down initiatives throughout the contract which everyone on the sales side knows means 'build in extra margin in years 1 & 2 to fake cost down to year 3' * The process is so 'fair' that it ignores who will actually do the job for the best total value (mix of quality and cost). This is maybe a little subjective, but often you can end up with what appear to be bizarre awards from an outside perspective.
- tetromino_ 4mo agoI get that the tax man needs to be paid, but what possible justification could there be for 1. demanding for this data monthly, rather than quarterly or yearly; and 2. demanding it via an annoying bespoke process rather than as an entry in the business's regular tax filing or some other pre-existing regular paperwork that small businesses are already submitting?
- tengwar2 4mo agoThis doesn't look like anything to do with tax. You would definitely need to cover it in the normal tax return in addition to this.
- testemailfordg2 4mo agoIf you are on a framework, that gives prospective public sector buyers assurance that certain basic checks/ due-dilligence about your business has already been done. So even if you have not made a sale to a public sector entity in recent times but are on a framework then makes sense to keep your details up-to-date...
- jarym 4mo agoOver 96% of registered small businesses sell NOTHING in a typical month. I hope the other 4% are raking it in large otherwise there's a real question about why any business even bothers!
- xtiansimon 4mo ago> “But there's a wrinkle. What if I've sold nothing? Well, I still have to log on, wait for an MFA code to be send, click through, and report "No Business". I think that's a waste of time.” Meh. If you’re a business in the US and your products subject to sales tax, you must file even if you have no sales. I made the mistake as a young freelancer to get a certificate of authority and not file when I had zero sales.