It has been revealed that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has wrongly issued millions of fines to taxpayers, just weeks before the self-assessment deadline on the 31st January.
Currently, 11.5 million workers are calculating their tax to ensure they submit the correct information to HMRC by the end of January.
However, during this month millions of taxpayers have been issued letters with penalty fines of £100, one penalty letter stated that “your tax return for the year ended 5 April 2018 was not sent in on time. Because of this, a penalty of £100 is payable.”
Experts have commented on the issue, saying that this is the last thing people need in January, especially when the deadline isn’t until another week or so.
Meanwhile, HMRC has denied that any notices have been sent out incorrectly.
An HMRC spokesperson said: “No penalty notices have been sent to customers doing their self-assessment online. Those who have sent their paper returns late have been issued penalties as the paper deadline has passed.”
Alongside this recent mistake, many people have experienced a number of technical issues on the site and using HMRC’s calculator.
HMRC added: “We are aware of an issue with payment reminders for a small number of customers. Anyone who is affected should contact us and we’ll put it right. Nobody will be charged a penalty or additional interest due to this problem.”
If anyone has received these premature penalty notices then they should contact HMRC as soon as possible to rectify the matter.
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