Your first task for 2016: fill in that tax return!

What made your Christmas special? Perhaps it was the carol service. Perhaps it was the lunch. Perhaps it was the special time spent with your family. Or if you were one of the 2,044 people who submitted your tax return after lunch perhaps it was the peace of mind of knowing that your January weekends were to be your own rather then the taxman's.

I wasn't one of those 2,044. I also wasn't one of the 4,502 people who filed on Boxing Day, nor one of the 24,546 people who put down their Prosecco for long enough to do it on New Year's Eve. I suspect I am not alone: last year, of the ten million self-assessment tax returns due in the UK, 4.3 million were filed in January with a terrifying 32,000 filed on the morning of deadline day (one of which was mine). So, for me at least, this weekend belongs to HMRC.

The key thing here, or so the accountants say, is to give yourself plenty of time and to get everything right: the tax office "takes a tough line on carelessness and non-compliance", says the Daily Mail. HMRC has a few top tips on getting started.

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Gather all your papers together first, says Ruth Owen, its director-general of personal tax. If you do any employed work, that means your P60 or P11D. If you have savings, it means records of all interest paid to you and of all pension contributions made (if you are a 40% or 45% taxpayer, you will want to reclaim tax on these). If you are self-employed, it means details of every penny earned and every penny taken up in expenses. And keep all this stuff on file around one in 20 tax returns generate questions from HMRC.

Owen's next few tips seem hardly worth mentioning, but the fact that she has included them must mean that some of us find them tricky. Don't forget to press "submit" when you are done, she says. Then write down your confirmation code. And whatever you do, don't forget to actually pay: the 31st is not just the submission deadline, it is the payment deadline too!

Finally, a word of warning. You might think that you don't need to file a return. But if you made any income or capital gains in 2014/2015 that have not yet been taxed, you do. That means everything from profits made from an Ebay-selling business, to capital gains on the sale of a buy-to-let investment, or interest you might have been paid on a PPI settlement. Note too that if you earn more than £100,000 in all, you are generally advised to fill ina tax return regardless of the source of the income.

It isn't too late to register for self-assessment, says George Bull at RSM, but you do need to hurry: it takes about ten days to get your ID and password in the post and the deadline is a mere 23 days away!