Tax deadline looms

The government could make almost 100 million in fines as taxpayers rush to complete their tax self-assessment forms.

11:19 31 January 2005

The government could make almost 100 million in fines as taxpayers rush to complete their tax self-assessment forms.

Today is the final day for forms to be returned but around one million look likely to miss the cut-off point, leaving the government with a huge cash windfall.

As well as being hit by daily charges of 60 on late submissions, taxpayers also face interest on any unpaid tax.

An online filing system was implemented to deal with the influx of returned forms, but it appears that many taxpayers have been prevented from utilising the system due to technical problems on the Inland Revenue's website.

However, the Revenue claims the website problems were a result of heavy traffic caused by scores of taxpayers striving to return their forms at the last minute and warned this would not be accepted as a valid excuse for missing the deadline.

An Inland Revenue spokesman told the London Evening Standard: "The system hasn't crashed as we have been receiving returns throughout the weekend. But some people have been experiencing difficulty getting through because this is the busiest weekend of the year.

"We have increased the bandwidth to cope with very heavy traffic."

He added: "People have had since April to file their returns. The service is available throughout the tax year so the moral is 'don't leave it until the last minute to file your return, either electronically or the paper version'."