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HMRC extends late-fee amnesty after site crash

Tim Ferguson silicon.com

Published: 06 Feb 2008 09:30 GMT

People who filed their tax returns online over the weekend will be exempt from a £100 late filing penalty, following problems with the HMRC Self Assessment Online website.

The HMRC self-assessment tax website was unavailable for a large part of the day on 31 January, which was the deadline for filing self-assessment tax returns online.

As a result of the problem, the deadline was initially extended by 24 hours to the end of Friday 1 February, with users not being fined for filing after the original deadline.

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But with many people also unable to access the website on the Friday and with more than 7,000 people filing on either Saturday 2 February or Sunday 3 February, the late-filing penalty has also been waived for these days.

An HMRC spokesman told ZDNet.co.uk's sister site, silicon.com: "If [people] receive a penalty, they can write to us under reasonable excuse provisions and we will look at the case."

On Thursday alone, more than 200,000 people successfully filed their tax returns online, despite the website problems.

A record 3.7 million people filed their tax return online by the 31 January deadline.

Credit: HMRC waives late fee after site crash from silicon.com