It's that time of year again. Four times per year, I have to fill in the VAT form that tell HMRC how much money they're going to take from me to waste on things other than beer. So I went to the HMRC web site and clicked on "start now".
After a long pause, it redirected me to https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/ and I was told "Site unavailable".
So I tried to ping it. Nothing. So I checked that the DNS was resolving, with "nslookup www.tax.service.gov.uk". Nothing. Clearly, something catastrophic has happened (I'm trying not to rejoice prematurely); maybe some benevolent deity has hurled lightning at the HMRC computer, which I imagine as being a Sinclair Spectrum, sitting in a dark cupboard. I can dream, can't I?
I abandoned the attempt to do my VAT, and went back to it a while later. Either they've fixed whatever had gone wrong, or else they rebooted the Spectrum. I logged on, they sent the 6 digit code to my phone, and I filled in the VAT form. They owe me, because I pay EU non-UK VAT via the VAT Moss system, and I shudder to think what's going to happen after Brexit, because whether the Brexit is hard, soft or medium, you can bet your bippy that it will be different and I'll have to change my software and procedures to accomodate it.
My VAT is done for another three months.
... later ...
I think the problem was a massive DDoS attack against a DNS provider..
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