iPhone apps for everything, these days...

The Irish Revenue Service now has an iPhone application! Oh, that sounds useful, you might think; one can do income taxes in the pub! Well, it's just PAYE. Well, that sounds wonderful; one can claim the rental tax credit, or one of the obscure ones involving owning more than eight sheep, or whatever!

Well, actually, it's just for health expenses...

On the plus side, it is free; it would have been rather cheeky of them to charge 79cent for it. And, believe it or not, it looks much nicer than their normal webapp, though that is largely because their normal webapp is actually a terrifying Flash thing written by mad people, of the "let's implement our own scrollbars in Flash" variety. But, really, can you ever imagine anyone ever, ever, ever using this thing? Especially given that you have to log in with your PPS and PAYE pin, and let's face it, no-one is ever going to remember either while on the move.

Sadly, it seems to be their only app at the moment; I was hoping for a whole array of apps for declaring rental income in Spain, claiming tax off photocopiers, and so forth.

I actually installed it to have a look, but sadly I have no medical expenses to claim, and I am not sufficiently keen to review it that I'd go and break an arm for the purpose, or anything. I do note, though, that they have gone to the trouble of making their own custom UIListView cells for it, and there is a little PAYE Anytime logo in the top right where the Edit button is meant to go; just a logo, not a button, which is probably against the Human Interface Guidelines. All in all, though, it is actually quite nice, much better than the afore-mentioned Flash thing.

However, the 'Support' link goes to the normal PAYE Anytime site, with not a mention of the iPhone app. How did this get approved? Apple must be getting soft.