Research has revealed that nearly 20% of small business owners admit that they do not expect to get their tax returns in on time this year, which will put £200m into the taxman's coffers from the resulting fines.

According to accounting software company KashFlow, 32% of small business owners said that this was due to the fact the self-assessment forms were too confusing. 48% said that they had not sent the documents through to their accountant on time.

13% of respondents said that they were too busy to get the forms completed and 9% said they had not seen HM Revenue&Custom's advertising campaigns and simply forgot they had to do it.

In its poll of 750 small business owners, KashFlow found that the percentage of late filers was up from 14% in the previous year.

KashFlow MD Duane Jackson said: 'It is really worrying that there is still a huge amount of people out there who aren’t keeping on top of their bookkeeping so as to get information over to their accountant on time. A few years ago this would have been understandable, but it’s really inexcusable now that there are accounting packages available that make this a relatively easy task.'

Further reading:

Two-tier HMRC tax filing system uncovered