HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has released a series of interesting facts about Self-Assessment as millions of taxpayers prepare to submit their annual tax returns.

For example, around 100,000 eager individuals filed their tax returns on 6 April 2020, which is the first day of the tax year.

Here are some other useful facts about the annual Self-Assessment process:

• In January 2011, around 3.4 million taxpayers completed a Self-Assessment tax return online (this has increased to an estimated five million in January 2021)
• This year’s deadline (31 January 2021) falls on a Sunday – the last time this occurred was 2016.
• The busiest filing day last year (and most years) was 31 January, with 702,171 returns completed
• The peak hour for filing last year was between 16:00 to 16:59 on 31 January when 56,969 customers filed
• HMRC has increased the self-serve Time to Pay threshold to £30,000 to help Self-Assessment customers spread the cost of their tax bill this year.

The release of these insightful facts coincides with the 20th anniversary of the launch of online tax returns. In 2001, the first year the system was introduced, some 38,000 online tax returns were filed.

In comparison, HMRC estimates around 11 million online tax returns will be filed in total this year, with more online submissions expected in future years as the nation moves towards a highly digitised tax system.