I run a Children's Charity in my spare (!) time, and since I have 50 Employees the HMRC required me to to Register with the UK Government Gateway in order to make my End Of Tax Year Returns electronically. I didn't get the option of chosing an easy-to-remember
User ID, they gave me one - 12 characters NNNANAAAANAA.
Then OFSTED come along and tell me to also use the Government Gateway for their Statutory Reporting. I try to re-use my User ID for HMRC and get told I can't use it - I have to apply for another User ID - this one is 12 digits long.
So as an Employer I now have 2 User IDs for dealing with 2 Government Departments. How long before I have to apply again for another Department (eg Works & Pensions?).
Not that long - of course I now need to use the Government Gateway for my Personal Income Tax Assessment - and of course I can't Register re-using either of the User IDs I already have - not even the HMRC one - because that is assigned to me as an Employer,
and now I'm playing the role of an Employee (of another Company). So now I have yet another 12 digit User ID. This in addition to the 9 character National Insurance Number and the 10 digit "Unique Taxpayer Reference Number" (UTR) - when did that sneak in?
The Government Gateway says on its own website its to deliver "joined up Government" - but did no-one ever mention "joined up Users"?
At this rate, I'm going to have more Government Gateway User IDs in my wallet than Credit Cards!
Any chance that the system works on the basis of the Supplier (no other than Microsoft!) being paid a Registration Fee for every User ID that gets issued?