Paul Aplin has been at the forefront of online tax filing for years. In his role as deputy chair at the ICAEW tax faculty he recently worked diligently behind the scenes with other tax aficionados to persuade Lord Carter to reverse his tax filing recommendations.

However, news that HM Revenue & Customs had agreed with Lord Carter’s revision of self-assessment filing deadlines did not reach Aplin very easily. While chatting to TS, Aplin realised that his firm, AC Mole & Sons, had no electricity.

TS could not even print out and fax the new deadlines email through to him. Fearing a return to old-fashioned hard copy correspondence must have chilled Aplin to the heart ­ think of all those paper tax returns!

So TS read the press release over the phone to him, which calmed him down slightly. Hours later and Aplin was back online and dealing with the world electronically. Good job it didn’t happen on 31 January.