The UK Government's Low Value Purchase System Is a Waste of Time

I 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?

My 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.

I 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.

Their 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.

"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).

> 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.

Government employees and departments need performance incentives. And not ones that are so far removed from their day-to-day as "voting."

Just 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.

Why 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?

The ridiculous system of "you have to tell us you've done nothing" seems endemic in the UK government.

So 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.

They should just have a "suspend account" option. You file a nil return once, suspend, never come back unless you have to. Seems easy enough.

in 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.

Eh, 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.

This reminds me of the terry gilliam movie Brazil, with dystopian bureaucracy...

I think "machine readable" in UK government parlance might just mean 'not hard copy' but I'm not 100%.

And how much time have humans collectively wasted reading this article?

This 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 ?