One in five pensioners now have the “misery” of having to submit an annual tax return, a Freedom of Information request has found.

The request, submitted by Royal London director of policy Steve Webb, asked the government how many people over the age of 65 submitted tax returns for the latest year available and the same figures for five years earlier.

HM Revenue and Customs revealed that in 2015/15 1.7 million people over the age of 65 submitted a tax return and, of these, 275,000 were over the age of 80. This compares to 1.6 million in 2010/11, of which 304,000 were over 80.

Webb explained that the increase is due to a mixture of growth in the pension population, a rise in pensioner incomes and the effects of the ‘granny tax’ where George Osborne froze pensioner tax-free allowances in the 2012 Budget.

“Our FOI shows that 1.7 million pensioners each year face what I’ve called the misery of filling in an annual tax return, and over a quarter of a million of these are over the age of 80; retirement and even old age don’t get you off the joys of the annual tax return,” Webb said.

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