by Ross Clark - Wednesday, 5th September 2007 -

Hello there. NLPG UPRN?

You didn’t catch that? I’ll repeat: NLPG UPRN?

If you still don’t get it, neither do I.

And I’ve even taken the trouble to read the 40 pages of accompanying notes to Inland Revenue form number SDLT1, relating to the government’s new Stamp Duty Land Tax.

NLPG UPRN, by the way, is question 31. What’s more, it is the whole of question 31.

There are no other words of explanation whatsoever.

My first thoughts when I saw this question were that either the Inland Revenue is trying to make its forms more accessible to teenagers by reproducing them in text message-speak, or that it is putting all its material through Bletchley Park in an attempt to stop dastardly foreign powers from undermining our tax system.

If the latter is the case, the Inland Revenue has almost certainly succeeded. I can’t see the Russians or whoever penetrating SDLT1 for at least another decade or two.

Unfortunately, neither can I see British home-buyers and their solicitors deciphering it too easily, either.

Until last November, paying stamp duty on property transactions was a relatively simple affair.

The relevant form consisted of one page and 12 questions. The new form, by contrast, consists of eight pages and 71 questions.

And that is before you even get round to filling in SDLT2, which has to be filled in if there are more than two vendors; SDLT3, in cases where there are more than two properties involved, or SDLT4, required in cases where the purchaser is a company.

The change in the size of the form does not adequately convey the scale of the bureacratic inflation involved in the change from stamp duty to stamp duty land tax.

NLPG UPRN, I eventually discovered, stands for National Land and Property Gazetteer Unique Property Reference Number.

Getting hold of this number is a trial in itself.

Taxpayers are informed: “You can get it through ‘Intelligent Addressing’, who operate the NLPG hub for the local government Information House; or alternatively from the local authority’s Local Land and Property Gazeteer Custodian.”

How one identifies and contacts this splendidly-named gentleman is not explained, though perhaps one ought to be unable to miss him: the only figure I can imagine worthy of this title would wear a powdered wig, a scarlet tunic fixed around his six foot girth with the aid of a leather belt, and would be conveyed about town in a sedan chair.

A sedan chair would certainly be a little more up to date than the Inland Revenue’s means of receiving form number SDLT1.

“Customers,” as the Revenue irritatingly insists on calling its victims these days, are instructed to send the completed form to the “Rapid Data Capture Centre” at Netherton in Merseyside.

They do this by popping in the post box. In spite of the government’s supposed commitment to e-commerce, an online version of the form will not be available until the autumn.

It isn’t just galling for honest tax-payers to be set this obstacle course; it is ridiculous given the government’s regular pronouncements as to how it is cutting red tape.

Far from being committed to cutting bureaucracy, it takes every opportunity to increase it.

There is one happy consequence of the advent of stamp duty land tax and form number SDLT1: several hundred people on Merseyside have found a steady, well-paid job at the Rapid Data Capture Centre.

I am quite sure, however, that the government would be better off leaving the business of job-creation to the private sector – something that would be considerably easier were businesses less burdened by tax and regulation.

One thing that certainly won’t result from the change in the stamp duty regime: more tax being collected.

Previous experience ought to have taught the government that more taxes and more complicated taxes do not add to public revenues.

On the contrary, it was announced last month that the Inland Revenue is to write off £789m in unpaid national insurance contributions.

The backlog dates from when self-assessment was introduced seven years ago and taxpayers suddenly found themselves lumbered with 30 page forms to fill in and hugely complicated sums to compute.

One million forms are still outstanding. The Inland Revenue explained that the unpaid contributions were written off only in cases where it becomes “neither practical nor cost-effective to pursue the debt.”

In other words where the poor bugger died before he got to grips with the Inland Revenue’s forms.