Taxes: Two-thirds of Brits do it online

The HMRC has revealed two-thirds of income tax self assessments (SA) have been filed online for this tax year, following the 31 January deadline for submissions.

Some 67 per cent of SA tax returns were filed over the internet this year - equating to 5.75 million of 9.5 million self assessments completed by taxpayers. The figure is an increase of 50 per cent on last year, when 3.8 million tax payers filed online.

The HMRC said the highest volume of online returns came last Friday when 390,000 people filed their returns online.

Doubtless taxpayers and the HMRC will be breathing a sigh of relief at the figures this year after the online filing system suffered a crash on deadline day last year, forcing the department to waive the £100 late filing penalty for around 7,000 people who submitted their SA returns on 1 and 2 February 2008.

HMRC would not be drawn on when filings will migrate wholly to online submissions.

However, a spokesman for the department told silicon.com: "If you consider we had 37,000 online filings when the system was set up seven years ago, it's the way we see things going. Businesses do business with each other and their banks online more as time goes on and they want to do business with us that way too."