It took 6 months, 7 hours of phone calls, and a dozen emails to set up my online account with the UK tax office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
What caused the delay?
4 years ago, I filled out a paper form to register for my National Insurance Number (this is a unique number all residents have to make sure their income tax is recorded against their name).
And either due to 1) my messy handwriting, or 2) a misreading of my name by the civil servant, my last name had a single-letter typo. This one error resulted in me failing all the security and verification steps to set up my online tax account.
But what’s perhaps most shocking is it took 6 months of back and forth communication with HMRC until this typo was diagnosed as the root cause.
The systems we build are only as effective as the weakest link. And the second-order consequences of minor errors can be far reaching, and take a long time to solve.