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

You might think that you don’t need to file a tax return. But chances are, you do. And time is fast running out.

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.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.