The Inland Revenue has held out an olive branch to anyone unable to submit their tax return online because of slow responses from its website.

If people had tried to file their tax return online before the 31 January deadline, but received a 'submission failed' message, the Revenue has said it will waive late filing penalties as long as users go on to file within the next 14 days.

The Revenue said it has now "resolved" the delays in issuing responses to self-assessment tax return submissions via the internet, and said that all queued messages have now been cleared. It added that this applied to returns submitted via its own software or commercial products.

However, the Revenue went on to state: "We recognise that, if the submissions failed our validation, you may be unable to rectify and resubmit before the deadline.

"We hold a complete record of all submissions over the weekend and if any of those failed submissions are resubmitted within 14 days of the date when we sent out the 'submission failed' message we will waive any late filing penalty notices.

"We apologise for the disruption to the service and can assure you that no details have been lost and there is no need to resubmit successful returns."

People who did not submit their self-assessment tax return by midnight on 31 January still face a £100 penalty.