You do not want to receive a penalty for not filing your return in time. As you’d expect, most taxpayers provide their Self Assessment tax returns on time with honest information and pay their tax bill on time too. But alongside all these good citizens and business folk with their straightforward tax returns HMRC also receives a raft of laughable excuses as well as some dubious tax-reducing expense claims. Surely no one in our local area of Hertfordshire, Essex and north London would have put these whoppers for late tax returns forward?