Cogito ergo scribo

Yesterday, i helped 贝 to file for his income tax online. I had to do it at my office because he wasn't able to do so at his as well as at home. He was prompted with some unknown errors and couldn't successfully complete the e-filing process after several tries at his office and at home, even though what i did at my office was exactly the same as what he had done. Even until now, we still don't know what actually went wrong.

I don't understand why the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia gotta make the e-filing procedure so difficult. I thought one of the reasons for having an e-filing facility is convenience, yet our government made it more inconvenient than sending in the form via post. I mean, if it's so much hassle to e-file, then we might as well just send in the forms.

贝 didn't receive the BE form by post, so he opted for online filing. But before he could do that, he would have to get a digital certificate from the authority. Unlike SingPass which can be requested through the Web and sent to us via post, our Inland Revenue Board required the tax payers to obtain the digital certificates personally from their offices. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the unreliable post service in Malaysia and hence we gotta collect it personally.

So we went there on Monday morning, took a queue number and waited for our turn. Although i've already filed for mine via post, i decided to get the digital certificate so that i can e-file for next year too. I was told that this digital certificate is only valid for three years, after which i'm not sure if we gotta repeat this silly process again.

When it was my turn, i showed the customer service officer my identity card, and then she started filling in a bunch of online forms with my personal details. Then after some clicking here and there, she generated the digital certificate and asked me to enter a private key (i.e. password) for it. After that, she saved the digital certificate in a floppy diskette, and i was told to use it for my e-filing.

There were PC stations at the Inland Revenue Board office with officers guiding people to do the e-filing. As we only took the earlier half of the day off, we gotta rush back to work in Singapore. And furthermore, we figured that we are IT people so we don't need people guiding us how to fill up some online forms. Boy oh boy, were we wrong. Filling up the form was no sweat, but errors occurred when 贝 wanna submit the form.

Seriously, i think this whole procedure is so screwed. Unlike the e-filing in Singapore where we just access the IRAS website with SingPass and fill up an online form, our government gotta make ours so much more sophisticated. We gotta first install a Digicert Signing Module to be used with Adobe Reader version 7.0. Then the digital BE form wasn't an online form but one in PDF format. After filling up the form, we gotta click a button for submission. This was when we would be prompted for the private key for our digital certificate. I understand the need for security, as probably the use of digital certificate is to add a layer of security for our income tax filing, but must it really be so tedious???

Just a few days back, a manager who's a Malaysian/Singapore PR had also asked me to help her on this e-filing. As our company's IT policy was to grant restricted user rights to all users, only administrator (i.e. me) could install programs on the machines. So the security setting was denying her from doing the e-filing since our dear government thought that it was fancy to install this and that on the PC just for doing this stupid filing.

I think our e-filing process is not user-friendly at all. If our government wanna encourage the people to move towards online filing, then they gotta make it simpler. Firstly, it was silly that people gotta take leave from work to obtain the digital certificates because the offices operate from 7.30am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday. It was also wrong to assume that everyone who wanna do e-filing is IT-savvy or has powerful machine with the latest programs installed. Older generation such as my mom wouldn't have any problem filling up and submitting the online form for Singapore e-filing, but she would definitely be so confused to do ours with all those installations. Some people, such the manager i mentioned, have the complete version 6 of PDF in her laptop but couldn't install Adobe Reader version 7 or the Digicert Signing Module due to the security setting of her login. Then 贝, who uses powerful laptop with all the necessary programs and administrator rights, still got some bizarre errors when trying to submit the forms. And oh, his laptop is so advance that there isn't a floppy drive, and i gotta help to transfer the digital certificate (that was saved in a floppy diskette) to his USB thumb drive with my PC in the company.

Frankly, rather than going through all these troubles, i might as well sit at home, wait for the BE form to be sent to me, fill it up in writing, and then send it in via post. That would be a lot more easier. So much for the move towards e-government huh!

Labels: malaysia, opinion