As Andrew Verity reports, the Revenue is set for a windfall of up to pounds 200m in fines from late payers. With just two days to go to the deadline for self-assessment, the Inland Revenue’s helpline is getting 10,000 calls a day from panicking taxpayers. He is also worried that if he fills in the form incorrectly he will be fined.The whole experience has left him drained.”I really don’t think self assessment is easier. Maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to a new thing, but it seems I have now got to deal with an awful lot more paper and the minute I see anything like that I just panic.”It’s been a bit of a last-minute disaster With them giving you a date you tend to leave it until then. For people like me who leave it until late, it is a nightmare.”.

And it’s not over yet.”I was hoping to finish it all tonight but I can’t until I get the last form back, so I’ll just have to get it done as soon as possible. I’m going to have to take it in by hand on Saturday I think.”If Mr Reid does not get the form in on time he will have to pay a pounds 100 fine which he says he cannot afford. “I definitely planned to do it by the end of last year but then it all went wrong and now I’m getting a bit panicky.”I’ve got no time at all left and it’s basically all hands to the deck. It’s been a nightmare – I just hope it all works out by Saturday.”Mr Reid needs three different P60 forms from his different employers. Although they should have been sent to him without him having to chase them up, only one arrived. He travelled 13 miles to Hamilton to pick up the second P60 and is still waiting for the third.He has spent several hours telephone different tax offices, a whole evening grappling with the form, as well as the trip to pick up the second P60. “A lot of musicians thought it would be great, that it would save us money in accountants’ fees, but it hasn’t turned out that way.”Although Mr Reid had known about self-assessment for months, he left it late to start filling in the forms.

His tax affairs are made more complicated by the fact that his work for the council counts as employment and his other business as self-employment.
Until the introduction of self- assessment, Mr Reid says, he found filling in his tax forms easy. By the time the right papers arrived on his door step, he had only a week to go until the deadline. Only then did he realise he would need to chase up various documents to include with the form.”I had been putting it off and putting it off,” he says. When he finally plucked up the energy to begin last month, he realised he had been sent the wrong documents. Then the nightmare began.Instead of sending him the correct form, the Inland Revenue sent him a reminder.

For the past eight years he has been sent a single form which he completed, attached his expenses, and sent off.When self-assessment was first announced he was hopeful that the tax process would be made even more simple. Hugh Reid, a 28-year-old musician from Glasgow, is struggling to complete his self-assessment tax forms. He has vowed to get them finished by the deadline on Saturday, but is still missing some of the documents he needs. Mr Reid, who lives with his father, plays the piano and organ, accompanying choirs and singers He also plays at funeral services for the local council. This silence has been seen by some as a veiled admission of guilt regarding the claims of abuse against them Nothing could be further from the truth. The Nazareth Sisters were dumfounded at the recent allegations since up till then they had never received any complaints whatsoever.”. They plan to lodge compensation claims at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.Yesterday the order said an investigation into the claims had failed to reveal the allegations that had been made.