subtitled "The Which? Income Tax Calculator 1982/3". You simply give the program full details of all your income and outgoings, and it will calculate the amount of tax you should have paid for that year.

The year you wish to use it for is all-important, though, as the actual details of allowances and percentages are changed at each new budget and therefore the program will need updating too.

This raises a problem. There is no user registration in this package, and no offer of an update facility.

Having paid this amount (£17.25) for a package, I would expect to be able to use it more than once!

If the program needed a full rewrite due to huge changes in the tax laws, even the offer of a discount on the new version would be better than nothing. This sort of software maintenance is being offered by some companies (Clares and Gemini, for example), so why can't the BBC do the same?

The program is very easy to use and has excellent documentation which can be used as a prepartion sheet to get the information you need in the correct order for the program.

Value is difficult to assess. I suppose if you recoup more than its cost from the taxman it is good value. But is it tax deductable?

D.C.