Farmers' Union of Wales president Gareth Vaughan today hailed the growing support the union has received for its campaign against HM Revenue & Customs' (HMRC) "absurd" decision to force farmers in areas with no or poor broadband provision to fill out their monthly or quarterly VAT returns on-line from 1 April this year.
Mr Vaughan, who lives in a broadband blackspot in Powys, welcomed Clwyd West MP David Jones' decision to protest to HMRC's director general Dave Hartnett stressing there are many areas of North Wales, including Gwytherin and Cwmpenanner in his constituency, which have no satisfactory broadband access.
Mr Vaughan also welcomed support from website ISPreview.co.uk - an independent source of Internet Service Provider (ISP) information, listings and reviews since 1999 - which stated HMRC's move "appears absurd" at a time when the Government's own Universal Service Commitment (USC), which aims to deliver a minimum broadband ISP speed of at least 2Mbps to virtually every household in the UK by 2012, has not even begun to be implemented.
In his letter to Mr Hartnett, Mr Jones described HMRC's position as wholly unreasonable and asked for an exemption for farmers in such circumstances. He has also written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, pointing out the unreasonableness of HMRC's position.
Mr Vaughan said: "We do not have broadband access at my farm in Dolfor, near Newtown - we were told our line is too antiquated for broadband.
"It's obvious that the HMRC don't fully appreciate the problems facing farmers and other businesses in rural communities like Powys. The age structure of the industry is such that lots of us grew up before the widespread use of computers and we're going to struggle."
The FUW's development director Emyr James had earlier contacted HMRC to find out what alternatives could they suggest if farmers were not able to go on-line. They replied that farmers could ask family or friends, who have a computer, to offer them Internet access or employ the services of an agent who could file the return on their behalf.
"This is a typically heavy-handed government approach, showing very little appreciation of the true situation for many small-to-medium-sized enterprises," said Mr James.
As a temporary solution the FUW will provide a service at its county offices where staff will file members' VAT returns on-line on their behalf. The paper-based summary should be completed in the normal way and taken to the county office.