Taxman credits IT upgrade for online filing success

Tax chiefs have praised an IT upgrade which they said helped them to cope with the huge demand for the online self-assessment tax system in the run-up to the end of January filing deadline.

Nearly two million taxpayers filed their self assessment returns online by the 31 January deadline - a 38 per cent increase on last year, according to figures from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). Almost a quarter of returns are now submitted online.

The HMRC website processed 719,913 self assessment returns during January.

Of these, 336,277 returns were received in the final seven days, and 216,154 in the final four days until midnight on 31 January.

At the peak of the influx, during the mornings of Monday and Tuesday this week, the website was processing around 8,700 returns per hour - or two and a half every second.

Some daredevil taxpayers left filing their returns as late as they could - 2,300 were received between 23:00(GMT) and the midnight deadline.

Last year the Inland Revenue - as it was then known - faced criticism when its online system slowed down because of the traditional last-minute rush to file. But the agency has beefed up its systems to cope better this year.

HMRC chairman Sir David Varney said in a statement: "By managing the filing peak closely, enhancing our IT infrastructure and improving our system monitoring, we have successfully ensured that taxpayers have been able to file in time for the deadline."

The total number of self assessment returns completed both on paper and electronically will not be known for several weeks, as paper returns are processed manually.