Little credit for the taxman

Dear HM Revenue and Customs,

Are we perhaps unfamiliar with the idea of this new-fangled web thingy?

Today's news brings us the sad tale of up to 1,500 staff at the Department for Work and Pensions who have had their identities stolen in a tax fraud. The fraudsters' work was made easier by the fact that, having swiped a few basic details from the hapless DWP folk, all they had to do was enter said details on your website and emigrate to Marbella on the billions that you kindly channelled into their bank accounts. It was made doubly easier by the fact that tax credits don't even have to be paid into the same bank account as the person they are allegedly for.

You have responded by the utterly non-panicky, considered and measured step of completely shutting down the online service, so that now honest people can't even calculate what they might be eligible for.

A spokesman on the news tells us that in fact online applications are subject to a number of tests, but won't go into details for security reasons. Well, quite, we can all see how useful that would be.

It seems your mistake was to assume that the purpose of the web is to give away money. It is not. It is however quite a useful gizmo for sharing information. You will find most banks and building societies offer online mortgage and loan calculators for the convenience of customers, which in no way actually commit said banks and building societies to hand out dosh. But they do let everyone know where they stand, which is useful.

You will find that the difference between calculating eligibility and automatically assigning money to someone is about one and a half lines of HTML code, or at the worst, maybe Javascript. If you like, I will be glad to remove these lines for you. My rates are most reasonable. You will then be able to offer a commitment-free calculator service, and everyone except the conmen will be happy.

Sincerely,
Ben