Taxman gets record number of online returns

More than 80 per cent of employers' end-of-year tax returns were completed online - up 10 per cent on last year.

About 1.4 million out of the 1.6 million returns, 87 per cent, received by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) were sent online, it has revealed.

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Each year about 1.8 million employers throughout the UK are required to inform HMRC of their employees' tax and national insurance payments for the last financial year. The HMRC also saw a 23 per cent increase in the number of P14 returns successfully filed compared to last year. Employers with 50 or more employees must file their 2007-08 return online.

HMRC said almost 60 million P14s were received, and 70 per cent of these have already been posted successfully to National Insurance Recording System.

Mike Shipp, HMRC director of PAYE, SA and NICs said in a statement: "I'm delighted that so many employers have successfully filed online.

"We were determined to make the experience as customer friendly as possible and these figures suggest we've gone a long way to achieving this."

People filing their self-assessment tax returns online had an £100 late fine waived in January after the system crashed on deadline day.