At the start of this month, over five million tax returns were still outstanding. Now there is exactly one week left before the self assessment deadline and HMRC are still waiting for over three million tax returns.
In the three weeks since the start of the new year, two million tax returns have been submitted to HMRC using their online systems.
Compared to the previous year those required to submit tax returns are more organised with this year seeing an extra 25,000 tax returns completed compared to the same time period last year.
Last year however, had 7 percent of tax return requests missing the deadline and therefore hundreds of thousands of taxpayers received an automatic £100 penalty. The penalty is applied automatically if a tax return is late and/or the payment required by 31st January isn't made.
We previously reported that this year it takes around three hours to fully complete a tax return - that is income, expenditure and reliefs for the period between 6th April 2017 and 5th April 2018.
Use or tools and guides to help you plan/estimate your tax bill and payments.