{"id":1701,"date":"2017-02-02T10:40:46","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T10:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1701"},"modified":"2017-02-02T10:40:46","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T10:40:46","slug":"hmrc-phone-lines-descended-chaos-ahead-tax-return-deadline-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/hmrc-phone-lines-descended-chaos-ahead-tax-return-deadline-day\/","title":{"rendered":"HMRC phone lines \u201cdescended into chaos\u201d ahead of tax return deadline day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reports suggest that a \u201ctechnology failure\u201d left hundreds of thousands of self-assessment taxpayers \u201cuncertain whether tax payments had cleared\u201d on 30 January \u2013 the day before the deadline for online tax returns.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Approximately 11 million taxpayers are required to complete a self-assessment tax return every single year. All paper tax returns need to be filed with HMRC by the end of October, whereas the final deadline for online returns falls on 31 January.<\/p>\n<p>Late returns will attract penalties from HMRC \u2013 beginning with an immediate \u00a3100 fine if a return is late by just a matter of hours.<\/p>\n<p>A report in <em>The Times<\/em> suggests that as many as 400,000 taxpayers tend to wait until deadline day before they submit their self-assessment tax return.<\/p>\n<p>This year, it is thought that thousands of taxpayers rushed to file their returns on the last two days of January. On 30 January, HMRC\u2019s phone lines \u201cdescended into chaos,\u201d buckling under the demand of desperate taxpayers seeking last minute information from HMRC\u2019s customer service operatives.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Times<\/em> reports that a \u201ctechnology failure\u201d cut many callers off before they received their transaction numbers \u2013 leaving them uncertain whether their tax payments had cleared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reports suggest that a \u201ctechnology failure\u201d left hundreds of thousands of self-assessment taxpayers \u201cuncertain whether tax payments had cleared\u201d on 30 January \u2013 the day before the deadline for online tax returns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1702,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions\/1702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}