The new British Telecommunications Plc, setting out to boldly go where no national phone company has gone before – isn’t that new logo impossibly fey and insubstantial for such a mission? – has got off to a pretty poor start: the Office of Telecommunications is reportedly investigating complaints that customers whose bills traverse the April 1 introduction date for 17.5% value-added tax will also have to pay the extra tax for the last three weeks of March as well because Telecom’s computers can’t cope with two different tax rates – all of which will mean a UKP60m windfall for the value-added taxmen.
