Inland Revenue Website Struggles To Cope With Self-Assessment Traffic

by Robert Lee, Tax-News.com, London

02 February 2005

Thousands of self-assessment taxpayers in the UK are facing automatic £100 penalties after the Inland Revenue’s computer systems struggled to cope with the volume of users attempting to file and pay their 2003/2004 taxes online ahead of the January 31 deadline.

According to the Financial Times, up to 5,000 returns per hour were being filed through the Revenue’s website in the run-up to the deadline, with tax professionals reporting severe difficulties attempting to log on to the site over the weekend prior to January 31.

The technical difficulties forced some users to print off the self-assessment forms on the website and physically deliver them to their nearest tax office. However, those who failed to get their returns to the taxman by first post on Tuesday will receive an automatic £100 fine, and it has been estimated that the Revenue could net £4 million from late filers in this manner.

The Revenue also has the power to levy daily fines of £60 per day on non-filers, although it must seek the permission of the department’s independent commissioners before resorting to this measure. Nonetheless, it has dished out daily fines to some 15,000 late filers to date.

The Revenue has denied that its IT systems experienced difficulties on deadline day, claiming that it had increased the website's bandwidth by almost 50%.

Dismissing the reports of technical problems, one spokesman told The Times that the website was merely running “slightly slower” due to the heavy weight of traffic.

The number of taxpayers who filed electronically this year is expected to surpass the 690,000 who filed online last year.

Including those who used other proprietary electronic filing systems, it is anticipated that the total figure will top 1 million.

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