Almost a million taxpayers have failed to file their self-assessment tax returns and will now be hit with a £100 fine.
HM Revenue and Customs has revealed it will be issuing around 850,000 late filing penalties to taxpayers who did not meet the January 31 deadline for online personal tax returns for 2011/12.
And for most of these the punishment will get even harsher. Some 790,000 had still not filed their return between February 1 and 15, who will now start accruing daily fines of £10.
A HMRC spokesman said: 'Anyone who hasn’t yet sent their 2011-12 tax return to HMRC will have already incurred a £100 late-filing penalty.
'To avoid any further penalties, they should send their return as soon as possible, as well as paying any outstanding tax due for the 2011-12 tax year.'
Those who filed their returns in the first two weeks of February will not incur the daily penalties but will still get the £100 fine, notification of which is expected to fall through letterboxes in the next week.
More... Five tips to help you get your self-assessment form in as soon as possibleHMRC says it has received around 9.7milion returns for the 2011/12 tax year so far. This marks an improvement on the same time last year when just under 81 per cent of the 10.5million self-assessment tax returns had been filed by the January 31 cut-off.
The £10 daily charges will continue up to 90 days - a total fee of £900. If a return still hasn't been made after six months, a further penalty of 5 per cent of the tax due or £300 will be paid, whichever is greater.
This 5 per cent penalty is repeated if the return is 12 months late, or they may face a demand to pay up to 100 per cent of the tax due instead.
A software glitch at HMRC on tax return deadline day saw 1,200 people wrongly debited the amount of tax they were due to pay three times as the taxman's online payment service repeatedly froze.