Information gleaned via the government’s freedom of information legislation has been obtained relating to tax return submissions for the year ended 5 April 2009.
The total of self assessment tax returns submitted for 2009 tax year was just under 9 million and of these, just under 6 million were submitted online. The balance, 3,014,151 self assessment tax returns were submitted by paper.
It will be interesting to watch this number for the 2010 season as there must come a time when the government announces that all tax returns will have to be submitted online. That is already the case to all intents and purposes with VAT returns and is similarly being done for corporation tax. 3 million tax returns done by hand or at least submitted in paper form involves HMRC with a considerable amount of work and a great deal of scope for error – something that won’t surprise anyone.
The other interesting statistic is that over 1.7 million people used the HMRC free online product to submit their tax returns. In the light of the massive amount of negative publicity about HMRC, I would not expect to see that number increase and you have to wonder why anyone would use HMRC’s system at all.
Talk about sleeping with the enemy!
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