a monopoly on certain services I would never use you again, but yep, I'm stuffed. I have to use your stupid flabby services. Only solution is to go back to old off-line, pedestrian channels that work, as you deal with a real person. Perhaps a good thing in these hard times, would rather secure the position of a real person, trying to make an honest living, than support a system no doubt being supported by some huge, over-priced consultancy! Thanks for wasting 30 mins of my life, that I'll never get back .gov. The card will be cut up, and filed in the shredder. I will go back to offline thank you very much. I registered for the government gateway two weeks ago for tax self assessment. Tried to log back in today using the user ID and password to register for VAT, but it wouldn't work. Phoned the 'help'desk who said that I couldn't log back in until my activation code and unique tax payment code came through, which will take 4-6 weeks!!! I explained I needed to bill people in that time and provide a VAT number. They told me to phone the VAT helpline, which I did, and was told that all the lines were busy so to phone back at another time or go online. Grrrrrr. I was under the impression that the UK government were trying to encourage people to set up on their own to stimulate the economy. Quite frankly, this is enough to