As hundreds of thousands of taxpayers take to the web days or even hours before the January 31 deadline, Revenue & Customs has warned that its servers can become seriously overloaded. So if your return arrives late, you will still have to pay a £100 penalty — regardless of whether you tried to file it before the deadline.
The Revenue said: “We take the view that you have had a nine-month window in which to file this return. Given the amount of help available, there is not much excuse for being late,” it said.
However, Paul Aplin, deputy chairman at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, believes you would have good grounds for appeal in this situation.
Also, if you have not yet registered for the online service it can take up to seven working days before you receive your user name through the post, so you had better apply now. You can do so online via the gateway.gov.uk website.
Filing self-assessment tax returns online — known as e-filing — is proving increasingly popular but, whatever you do, don’t use the address offered by the Self Assessment e-filing helpline (0845 605 5999), as this is wrong. All you will see is an annoying message saying: “Sorry, but the page you were trying to reach cannot be found.”