Inland Revenue Nets £90 Million From Late Tax Returns

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

06 February 2004

The Inland Revenue’s campaign to encourage self assessment taxpayers to beat the January 31st tax return deadline appears to have made little headway with the hundreds of thousands who regularly fail to file in time.

Consequently, around 900,000 taxpayers will be landed with a £100 automatic fine netting the Revenue the usual £90 million annual windfall from late payers.

The number of taxpayers who miss the January deadline every year has stayed more or less constant since the self-assessment system was introduced. This is despite the Revenue’s television and press campaign to push the online filing service and convince people that tax filing is a lot simpler than it is perceived as being.

Last Friday, the Revenue confirmed that the number of taxpayers who had missed the deadline was in line with previous years.

The accounting profession has been critical of the Inland Revenue’s recent advertising campaigns for failing to reduce the number of late filers. This has led some to suggest the introduction of a financial incentive to encourage timely tax returns.

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