Eight Percent of 18-20 Year Olds Miss Tax Return Deadline

Now that there are three weeks to go until the online tax return deadline on the 31st January, HMRC has released stats for last year's tax return penalties for missing the deadline.

An automatic £100 fine is applied when the final deadline for submitting a tax return is missed by a taxpayer, even if no tax is owed. Last year the overall late rate was 2.3 percent but regionally the stats vary significantly as well as in different age groups.

Some interesting stats to note:

1. People working in Administrative and Support Services have a 2.96 percent late rate - this is the highest among industry sectors.
2. Londoners are the worst offenders regionally for submitting late returns at 3.1 percent whereas Northern Ireland has the lowest regional late rate of 1.78 percent.
3. People over 65 years of age have a late rate of only 1.04 percent but 18-20 year olds have a late rate of 8.33 percent!
4. The late rate among age groups decreases as people get older - so the younger you are the higher the rate of missing the tax deadline is.

Over eleven million Self Assessment Tax Returns were sent out last year - so with an average late rate of 2.3 percent that means around 250,000 late returns in total, netting the Taxman instant penalty income of £25 million!

Here are the full figures released by HMRC:

Age Groups

UK Regions

Industry Sectors

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