Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ's » HMRC service issues Constant Polling

HMRC service issues Constant Polling

When you are submitting returns to HMRC through Andica software, it communicates directly with HMRC (Government Gateway) services to send transactions using a submission protocol defined by the Government Gateway. The submission process starts and the Government Gateway services returns the corresponding responses.


Once the submission process has started, there are occasions when the Government Gateway service is not working as expected and may be extremely busy or in planned or unplanned maintenance. In this case it does not respond with the corresponding responses to indicate the progress or whether the submission was successful. The Government Gateway has to provide appropriate responses back to the software.


During the submission process, if the software is continuously displaying 'submit polling' messages, this is an indication that there are issues with the Government Gateway (or a specific HMRC service). Government Gateway service is simply not responding to the software to confirm your submission. As can be seen from the Upload Status process the software is trying to get the response from HMRC server and the HMRC service is acknowledging the request but not responding with confirmation of receipt or rejection of your submission. This is an issue with HMRC service and cannot be controlled by Andica Software. You can cancel the process and try again later. The software will continue to Poll HMRC server till a confirmation or an error message is received.

The 'submit poll' process will stop after 50 attempts and the software will display a message.

These issues are beyond our control.


Customers should contact HMRC for any queries about Government Gateway service status or you can check HM Revenue and Customs service availability and issues web page. Be aware that there are delays in updating these HMRC status web pages.

In most cases, HMRC would have received the returns. HMRC may acknowledge by sending an email to your registered email address.


You must also complete the submission process through the software so that the software can get a final response back from HMRC. In such instances, where the software has not received a final response from HMRC server due to earlier issues with their server, the software will not display any submission status for the relevant returns and FBI Receipt will not be displayed as according to the software the submission has not been completed yet.


You can attempt the submission again and one of the following outcomes is possible:

a) The submission process will continue from the last stage and finish with acknowledgment message returned by HMRC server.

b) If HMRC have cleared the polling history from their server for the Correlation ID, they will return a message relating to an invalid Correlation ID. You can thereafter attempt submission again.

c) If the original submission was initiated and recorded in HMRC systems, the server will respond with a message 'Error 5015 Known Facts Check', which suggests that the original submission has been recorded in HMRC system. Software will then display submission error message for this latest attempt. If you want to you can submit an amended return as specified in 'Submitting Amended Returns' section of the user guide.

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