HMRC's Linux version of Basic PAYE Tools broke after update
Did you know that His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) offers free Linux tools? Sadly, though, they recently stopped working.
Reg reader Pete Donnell alerted us to the fact that the UK tax authority offers a Linux version of its Basic PAYE Tools, which the download page describes as "free payroll software from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for businesses with fewer than 10 employees."
Sounds good. We were impressed to see that, alongside its Windows and Mac versions, there's also a version of the software that supports "Ubuntu Linux version 20.04 LTS and 23.10." There's a detailed User Guide too, and more than one service status page, ranging from rather dated to extremely dated.
Of course, we wouldn't be writing about this if there weren't a snag. This story has been brewing for some time, but Pete told us that on February 5:
Basic PAYE Tools updated itself (per HMRC's recommendations), and promptly broke. I spent hours trying to fix it without success. The bug is definitely in the software itself rather than my setup: I installed a clean copy of Ubuntu 20.04 in VirtualBox, installed the latest version of the tools, and it still wouldn't work.