From the Electronic Telegraph:

ISSUE 1547 Friday 20 August 1999

Millennium bug blamed as taxman threatens firm, By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent

THE Inland Revenue threatened to seize goods from a law-abiding company because a fault related to the Millennium bug prompted the Revenue to believe the firm had not paid its tax and national insurance contributions.

It is the most serious incident so far known to have occurred as a result of the glitch which threatens to cripple computer systems and electronic devices by the end of this year. Experts said it was an indication of problems to come as organisations rush to fix their Millennium bug-infested systems.

In correspondence seen by The Telegraph, the Bradford Midland Tax District Office apologised on behalf of the Inland Revenue and blamed "computer faults at this end" for threatening an unnamed firm with the bailiffs. A Revenue spokesman said that several other companies had also been erroneously threatened with debt collection, as a result of problems in installing and using software that is meant to be free of the Year 2000 bug.

The letter, leaked to Computing, a trade publication, said that Year 2000-related faults were affecting other Revenue offices. The Inland Revenue said last night that it did not know how many of its 350 offices were affected. "I cannot give details of our Year 2000 measures and progress as you will appreciate that this is confidential, Government-sensitive, information," the letter said.

"But I can say that the above measures are causing extreme problems with the Inland Revenue, particularly this office and have been for several weeks now." The letter, written by a collector of taxes, added that the Revenue had looked at the firm's tax history and that payments were made on or before the due date.

"The issue of this demand was a human error compounded by the fact that the computer system was not available to view your records on the day of issue," it said. The system in question is being fixed and tested for Millennium compliance by EDS, a computer services company.

A Revenue spokesman said last night that the threatening letter was sent out when EDS's Infrastructure 2000 project caused a system crash that prevented tax office users from accessing up-to-date information on company tax records. "Bradford has experienced quite a lot of downtime so we sent out some letters even though we could not access the records," the spokesman said.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), August 22, 1999

Answers

Wait for this to occur several millions of times next January over here....all those SME's that aren't ready now, plus a government of faceless leaderless bureacrats who don't know any better than "read what the computer says" and "do what the book says" .....

It's starting folks, they got y2k'ed right in the finances.

Predicted this little impact too, but I was hoping I was being too pessimistic. (Sound of one hand patting one's self on the back. Sound of other foot kicking oneself into higer gear to finish more prep's.)

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 23, 1999.