The UK government's Low Value Purchase System is a waste of time

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/the-uk-governments-low-value-purchase-system-is-a-waste-of-time/

by ColinWright • 2 months ago

138 97 2 months ago

toyg3• 2 months ago

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.

jodrellblank2• 2 months ago

So 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?

toyg3• 2 months ago

Obviously you could unsuspend it at any time and report as necessary. That's what "suspended" means, as opposed to "closed" or "terminated". Come on.

solenoid0937• 2 months ago

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

lowercased3• 2 months ago

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.

elAhmo• 2 months ago

You 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.

lowercased3• 2 months ago

Sure 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.

hilariously2• 2 months ago

Huh, 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• 2 months ago

You’re making a fascinating assumption that the tax authorities’ systems are at all integrated with the Secretary of State systems.

SoftTalker3• 2 months ago

Same.

cucumber37328422• 2 months ago

Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money.

It's the same evil math behind every other billing scam that sails under the flag of ignorance.

Speaking of ignorance, to all those people saying you forgot to fill out a form, there are several states that are known to be maliciously sloppy about this sort of thing. You file a form and they silently reject it or billing you anyway on some questionable pretext because they can. NY is one of them. Doesn't surprise me that IL is too since both states are kinda cash strapped.

vharuck• 2 months ago

Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money.

The system is run by employees of whatever agency handles taxes. Neither the employees nor the agency keep a portion of the taxes. If they do not have the money or will to fix it, people are supposed to pressure their representatives to give them the money and mandate.

If this truly came down to an intent to squeeze more money out of people than they owed, that would almost always come from the law's wording. Again, pressure the representatives.

The only times an agency would squeeze money is when it's funded in large part by fines or fees, or if an employee is committing fraud and pocketing some of the money.

calvinmorrison• 2 months ago

Thats OK my county keeps threatening to pickup my dog if i dont get a new license. Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns?

throw1234567891• 2 months ago

They’ll just euthanise him. Better pay the license.

llbbdd2• 2 months ago

I was going to comment "dog license???" but I looked it up for my county and I had no idea this was a thing. I'm in awe. I adopted an adult dog ~9 years ago. He has issued literally one single bark in that span. He stays indoors or in my fenced-in yard 100% of the time because of some health issues. I'm supposed to pay an annual fee for this or they'll fine me?? Nobody ever told me this, not the shelter, not the vet he goes to regularly who presumably has the ability to check this.

There are also apparently canvassers paid by the county who go door to door checking for this?! I'm not the kind of person to typically nitpick about where my taxes are going, but...I retroactively and broadly apologize for every lighthearted jab I may have ever made about TV licensing in the UK. This is beyond dumb in comparison. And my condolences, the fact that this system leads to them harassing you in this way is completely insane.

turtlebits• 2 months ago

I was about to comment the same thing. I just got an e-mail about pet licensing, it's been almost 10 years since my dog passed.

throwaway8943453• 2 months ago

Illinois online forms are egregiously bad. A couple examples off the top of my head:

I was traveling through the state and got on a toll road by accident without cash to pay the tolls, the toll booth employee said I could just pay online, pointing to a sign that said "missed a toll? pay online at <url>", so we continued our trip intending to pay the tolls online. At the end of the trip, I logged on to pay our tolls--the application insisted that we enter the specific toll IDs of each toll that we missed, even though we didn't know we were supposed to be recording any toll IDs. If you didn't know the toll IDs, you could use a map application to look up the toll IDs, but the map application would crash within a second of opening it and even if you managed to get a screenshot the resolution was so low that the text was indecipherable. When I called the support number, they told me that I would be fined triple the cost of the tolls if I didn't pay within a week, but I would be able to pay without knowing the specific toll IDs that I missed. When I asked the agent to tell me what tolls I missed (clearly they knew if they were going to fine me), they told me they couldn't tell me for another week. I pointed out that this would be after the toll deadline and they relentlessly tried to avoid acknowledging that simple fact. Eventually I sent them my best guess about what I owed with a letter stating what I had attempted and that I would contact a lawyer about any fines and never heard from them again.

Some years later, after moving to Chicago, I had to file state taxes for the first time. The state issued me a driver's license with a 12 digit number, but the state tax form only allowed me to authenticate with an 8 digit Illinois driver's license number (the other acceptable forms of identification didn't apply to me for reasons I no longer remember).

SoftTalker3• 2 months ago

Illinois is one of the most administratively fucked up and corrupt states in the country. Four of the last ten governors have been so bad they actually served prison time and the current governor appears to be cut from the same cloth.

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/4-of-illinois-past-10-governo...

tardedmeme3• 2 months ago

I feel like half of these are quickly resolved in court when you explain what happened and the judge calls the state a bunch of fucking morons and dismisses the case. But the other half of the time the judge won't use common sense. Also the state is relying on you not wanting to show up in front of a judge out of your own state to contest what I presume is a relatively small amount of dollars.

pnw• 2 months ago

2 years? California chased one guy for taxes for 3 decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_Tax_Board_of_Califor...

jonathanlydall2• 2 months ago

In South Africa we have a TV license which any shop selling TV’s is required by law to report the buyer’s TV license number for any purchase.

The idea is that it funds public broadcasting and productions thereof, but like a lot of SOEs here, there is loads of corruption and inefficiencies, I only use my TV for streaming of content which is not produced locally, so I resent having to pay it each year.

However, it’s apparently a mission to get off it, even if you sell your TV you’re most certainly going to be harassed for years by debt collectors and what not.

Unlike your case though (where I expect the fine is not nothing), it’s only like R250/y (like 13USD) and they’ve smartly (which is surprising for an otherwise largely incompetent org), made it easy to pay. I get an SMS reminder and can have paid it by credit card within 2 minutes. So I’ll probably not bother trying to get off it as it’s so much more effort and a pretty small amount of money and hassle.

beAbU• 2 months ago

Heh, took me about a year after moving from SA to Ireland to get them to leave me alone about my tv license.

Here they have a tv license as well, but so far I've sidestepped it because I shipped my TV over, but one day I'll probably need to pay for one again. Only problem is now its something like 250 euro, not Ront, so it's a lot more pricey!

philipwhiuk• 2 months ago

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

Closi3• 2 months ago

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.

cjbgkagh4• 2 months ago

I 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.

tardedmeme3• 2 months ago

Now 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.

fg137• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

For most civic workers menial tasks are the bane of their existence. You are not going to get fired for doing your job correctly

rcxdude2• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

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

wubblewobble• 2 months ago

Non-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• 2 months ago

I'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.

IshKebab2• 2 months ago

No 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.

traceroute663• 2 months ago

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 ?

simonw3• 2 months 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.

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!

traceroute663• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

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?

lbriner• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

It'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• 2 months ago

government 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

IshKebab2• 2 months ago

Because then you don't have the "I forgot" excuse.

willtemperley2• 2 months ago

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.

willtemperley2• 2 months ago

Addendum: 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.

rwmj• 2 months ago

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.

nickdothutton2• 2 months ago

You are going to love Digital VAT, closely followed by Real-Time VAT.

gambiting• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

Why 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).

alibarber2• 2 months ago

I’ve never submitted a tax return in the UK as a simple PAYE employee.

In another European country where I work (Finland) it’s as you describe but it’s still more than doing absolutely nothing that I did in the UK.

nickdothutton2• 2 months 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).

cucumber37328422• 2 months ago

Approaching 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• 2 months ago

I 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.

mft_• 2 months ago

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.

em-bee3• 2 months ago

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.

Scoundreller2• 2 months ago

Restaurants 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-bee3• 2 months ago

tariffs wouldn't capture anything locally produced.

m4632• 2 months ago

Some people don't realize that receipts are not for them (the customer).

They're to make sure employees ring up the sale (and don't pocket the money)

and now I understand they're for the government too, to make sure taxes are paid.

gramie• 2 months ago

In Canada, I have to report my (small) self-employment income.

The other thing I have to do is enter deductions like moving expenses, tuition, charitable donations, medical expenses, etc., which the government doesn't have direct access to.

m4632• 2 months ago

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

copium• 2 months ago

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.

ksec• 2 months ago

I 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.

SoftTalker3• 2 months 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.

Closi3• 2 months ago

Yes - 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_• 2 months ago

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?

tengwar2• 2 months ago

This 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• 2 months ago

If 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• 2 months ago

Over 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• 2 months 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.

The UK government's Low Value Purchase System is a waste of time

Related Stories