This year’s tax deadline brought another hiccup from HMRC after thousands of tax payers who logged on to file their self-assessment found that the website was down.
Users took to twitter to vent their frustrations, with many customers’ worried that the problem wouldn’t be fixed in time and that they’d incur a late filing penalty.
This is one in a long line of technical errors for HMRC as last year we saw thousands of people forced to submit their 2016/17 tax returns on paper because of software issues.
The problems stemmed from HMRC’s online tax calculators not being properly updated to cope with changes to tax allowances, including dividends and savings.
The issue applied to distinct groups of people with certain combinations of savings and other income, including those with an annual income of more than £145,000 and non-dividend income of between £27,000 and £32,000, which is likely to include a number of business owners.
Although HMRC said that of the 10 million people who file tax returns online the numbers affected are ‘a very small percentage’, others estimated that the real figure would have been around the tens of thousands.
Whilst HMRC wasn’t able to resolve the issue in time last year, which saw us at Champion helping a number of clients to submit their returns by paper because of the ongoing issues, it plans to have the problem fixed ready for 2017-18 tax returns submissions. However, there are further changes to tax allowances this year that could bring additional complications.
If you’re concerned about the issue or want advice on how to submit your tax return, then don’t hesitate to contact your local Champion office today and find out how we can help.
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