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Over 6,000 islanders missed the deadline to hand in their tax return last Friday and will therefore receive a £250 fine, making a total of £1.5 million for the Taxes Office.
This is a 33% increase compared to last year when 4,500 islanders missed the deadline.
A total of 64,000 tax returns were issued in bulk before 3 January but only 53,619 were received back. While 10,381 are still oustanding, the Taxes Office explained that approximately 4,000 will come in via tax agents who have until July to complete their submissions for their clients. This leaves over 6,000 islanders so far who will receive a mandatory fine for late filing.
The Taxes Office said they received 23,054 returns between the beginning of May and the deadline, with 13,605 received in the last week before the deadline. 5,484 islanders presented their return on filing deadline day. In comparison, in the months since issuing the returns, the Taxes Office had received 6,249 returns in January, 9,334 in February, 6,381 in March and 8,501 in April. The peak seen in February was the result of a campaign encouraging islanders to get their place in the queue.
Pictured: The Taxes Office have processed nearly a half of the 53,619 returns received so far.
3,600 islanders visited the help desk last week, with over 800 of them asking for tax return reprints.
The Taxes Office said they have processed 24,708 returns so far, nearly half of those received. "This puts us around 6,000 ahead of where we were last year," a spokesperson confirmed.
It will likely take them the rest of the year to process the returns, due to the amount of manual work and calculations involved in the processing. "This will remain the case until we move off our current 35-year-old computer software system to our new revenue management system," they added.
Pictured: The Taxes Office is developing a new digital platform for revenue collection that will allow islanders to receive their returns in minutes.
Richard Summersgill, Comptroller of Taxes, told Express last October that the department had invested in a much-needed three year tax office modernisation programme. "The programme will run through to 2020 and transform the way we operate, with a new digital platform for revenue collection being a key part of the changes. The digital platform will manage all our revenue data and from the taxpayer’s perspective, enable online filing, and close the gap between ‘return submission’ and ‘bill production’ from months to minutes."
The new system, which tax officials announced in April was nearing completion on the first design phase, is being developed by Treasury and Social Security staff, who are working with New Zealand-based supplier DataTorque. It should go live in 2019 and pave the way to resolving the fact that wives currently need their husband’s permission to discuss their tax affairs, but not vice versa.
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