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PA
By lunchtime today, around 9.5 million self-assessment forms had been submitted ahead of tonight's cut-off for online returns, with a total of around 10.8 million expected to be submitted for the 2012-13 tax year.
Some 429,000 returns were received yesterday alone and today a further 205,107 returns were submitted by 1pm, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said.
The body said it is currently seeing around £17,000 worth of payments made every second.
The final day for tax returns to be sent in traditionally sees a flurry of activity and last year around 600,000 forms were sent in on deadline day.
The deadline for submitting an online self-assessment tax return and paying any tax due is midnight tonight. Those in self-assessment who fail to meet this face an initial fixed penalty of £100, even if there is no tax to pay, followed by possible further charges.
This year also sees many higher-earning parents completing a return for the first time because of changes to the child benefit system. HMRC said that fewer than 100,000 higher-earning parents still need to register for self-assessment.
These parents who are not in the self-assessment system could face a "failure to notify" penalty, which would be based on the tax that should have been paid.
Once parents register, they will be sent a taxpayer reference which they can then use to get set up for self-assessment and file their return online, a process that will take longer than tonight's deadline.
But HMRC has said that when looking at whether the penalty should be applied, the taxman will consider someone's circumstances on a "case-by-case basis", including what efforts they made to pay the tax owed on time.
Households where one parent earns more than £50,000 a year who continued to receive child benefit after January 7, 2013 have to pay a tax charge. If one parent has a taxable income of more than £60,000, then they must pay all the money back.
Those parents affected by the changes were given the choice of either opting out of receiving child benefit altogether or carrying on receiving it and paying any charge at the end of each tax year under self-assessment.
Penalties for missing today's self-assessment deadline start at £100 for one day's delay.
Ruth Owen, director-general of personal tax at HM Revenue and Customs, said that the authorities would take account of "reasonable" excuses for failing to meet the deadline, such as the chaos caused by flooding in Somerset.
But she made clear that eyebrows would be raised if anyone claimed that they had simply not heard about the change.
"We've been writing to people since autumn of 2012 so those people affected will have had at least three letters from us and we've done advertising campaigns through 2012 and 2013, so I think we've got the information out there," Ms Owen told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "I think it's important to
recognise that 90% of people have registered and understand what their liabilities are, so it's just those
last 10% we still need to contact."
Ms Owen urged anyone who has not yet registered to get in touch with HMRC as soon as possible.
The £100 penalty for a late self-assessment return can be followed by extra penalties of £10 a day on top, up to a maximum of £900.
At six months if the return is still delayed, there is another penalty of 5% of the tax due or £300, whichever is more. After 12 months, there is a further penalty charge of 5% of the tax owing or £300, whichever is higher.
Previous research by HMRC found that Londoners are more likely to miss their tax return deadline than people living in any other part of the UK.
Around one in nine (11%) people living in inner London who had to send in a tax return last year failed to do so by the relevant deadlines.
The most punctual taxpayers live in the South West, with only 6% of their tax returns arriving late last year.
Paper returns for the 2012-13 tax year should have been submitted by October 31 last year.