Overview
- Phone lines were shut from 11:40am to 2:15pm on January 15 due to a short-lived technical issue, according to HMRC.
- The disruption came in the run-up to the January 31 Self Assessment cutoff, when late online filers incur an immediate £100 penalty.
- HMRC advised using online services and its app; by January 5, more than 6.36 million returns were filed with about 5.65 million still outstanding.
- The revenue body has not disclosed the cause of the fault or whether it was linked to call volumes or a cyber incident.
- The outage renewed scrutiny of phone capacity, with official figures showing long waits and tens of thousands of dropped calls, and concerns for taxpayers who rely on telephone support or need help recovering Government Gateway access.