Biggest Deadline Day On Record!!
This year HMRC saw the biggest digital Self-Assessment event on record with 8.75 million of a total 10.2 million tax returns filed online by the 31st January deadline.
HMRC’s Director General of Personal Tax, Ruth Owen called it “another record-breaking year for Self-Assessment with 210,000 more people filing their returns on time than last year. We are grateful to the overwhelming majority of people who sent their returns on time. If you are one of the minority who missed the deadline, you still need to get your tax return to us as soon as possible, to avoid further penalties and interest mounting up.”
Missing the tax return deadline results in an automatic £100 late-filing penalty, with the penalty rising over time (https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns/penalties). People with a genuine reason for not filing should contact HMRC as soon as possible to ensure they do not incur more penalties.
Here are some (fun) facts from this year Self Assessment:
- 42% of people left filing their returns until January, despite having their reminders in April 2014.
- The busiest time for filing was between 1pm and 2pm on 30th January where a rate of 826 returns per minute were received, that’s nearly 14 a second!
- Nearly 10% of all the returns due were submitted on deadline day, that’s 980,000 returns.
- 890,000 returns were still outstanding as at midnight 31st January.
Image courtesy of 1shots at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
