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HMRC was forced to extend the tax deadline by a day at the end of January after its website went down under the weight of traffic.

"A record number of 204,000 taxpayers submitted online returns on 31 January, but between 10,000 and 15,000 taxpayers could not on that day because of a hardware problem in the computer systems supporting the service," according to a report by comptroller and auditor general, Tim Burr.

"The Department and its supplier have updated the Self Assessment online system and reviewed the testing of online services to ensure peak demands are met in the future," Burr adds. "It is also reviewing the wider lessons learned to enhance the speed with which it responds to such

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events."

HMRC claims the fault occurred despite rigorous load testing of the hardware provided by supplier, Capgemini. "The technical issues were caused by a complex infrastructure problem triggered by a surge in logins," HMRC claims in a statement.

"Our systems had been thoroughly capacity tested but this problem meant that we did not manage the 31 January peak as well as we would have liked. We have enhanced our testing procedures and the robustness of our infrastructure in advance of the Jan 09 filing peak."

However, HMRC refuses to discuss the precise point of failure. "For reasons of security HMRC does not give technical product / configuration details of the construction of its web portal environment," it claims.

Ultimate test

HMRC certainly hasn't been chastened by the experience. This year's self-assessment deadline for paper returns has been brought forward to encourage more online returns.

The Revenue claims 3.75 million people successfully filed their return online last year, up from 2.9 million the year before. Despite the problems, it claims more than 200,000 people filed on deadline day.

This year's online tax return has been simplified, according to HMRC, and more than 560,000 have already filed.