40,000 tax forms still outstanding

Monday 30 April 2018

More than 60% of Tax Returns issued are still yet to be received, with less than a month before the deadline of 25 May 2018.

40,000 of the 65,000 personal forms sent out for 2017 tax payment still haven’t been returned, prompting the Taxes Office to urge islanders to try and send them in over the next week to prevent the spike in workload and extra processing costs they had last year.

In 2017, 60% of islanders had returned their tax forms before May, many more than the current situation this year. But more than a third of tax returns weren’t received until the final deadline week, with 4,000 tax payers missing the deadline altogether resulting in a £250 fine.

This added to the extra pressure faced by the Taxes Office, who had just started moving their services online – a modernisation process they are still currently undertaking as it’s a three-year programme – which delayed processing time causing a 14% backlog felt by tax payers.

The Taxes Office advise that if islanders complete and send in their tax forms soon, they could get their assessment back by July, where it will be much later in the year if they wait until the deadline.

The Comptroller of Taxes, Richard Summersgill says late returns can have a knock-on effect: “As anyone can imagine, physically receiving this volume of post in a week creates significant logistical issues. Aside from Jersey Post, there are very few, if any, local businesses that have to process such a volume of post.

“If taxpayers file close to the deadline, we will need to take on temporary staff to deal with the volume of returns received and for the subsequent return logging. Last-minute and late filing costs taxpayer’s money, because of the administration spike and, for those filing late, their £250 compulsory late-filing fee.”