HMRC waives £100 fines for late self-assessment filers

HMRC waives £100 fines for late self-assessment filers

Late self-assessment taxpayers see their £100 penalties waived when they provide reasonable mitigation, as HMRC focuses on tax avoiders

LATE SELF-ASSESSMENT FILERS have seen their £100 fines waived by HM Revenue & Customs should they offer a “reasonable” excuse for doing so, it has emerged.

In an internal memo leaked to the Daily Telegraph, HMRC staff were asked to forego the £100 charge without further investigation if people with apparently mitigating circumstances appealed after paying their tax bill.

As many as 890,000 people are estimated to have potentially benefitted from the reprieve for missing the 31 January deadline as HMRC faces a backlog of almost a million letters from taxpayers.

With a list of reasonable excuses on its website, HMRC said it was focusing its resources on tackling major tax avoidance rather than “penalising people for trying to do the right thing”.

In the past, people who appealed the £100 fine faced two- or three-week scrutiny of their tax affairs before a decision was reached.

The memo to HMRC staff described the process as “lengthy” and questioned its necessity when the “overwhelming majority of appeals” were accepted.

“Our penalty regime is intended to influence customer behaviour, but also be clear and cost effective, fair and proportionate,” the document said.

“The current way of managing penalties does not meet these objectives, and so we have decided to take a more proportionate approach where a customer has filed their return late, and then appealed against their penalty.

“This means that in the vast majority of cases we will be accepting the customer’s grounds for appeal, and we can cancel the penalty.”

A spokeman for HMRC added that despite the policy, no one will be let off the fine unless they’ve now sent in their return and “have a good reason for sending it in late”.

“This is part of our planned approach to penalty appeals, particularly for small businesses and individuals who have sent their tax return in late,” he said.

 

 

Share

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Resources & Whitepapers

Why Professional Services Firms Should Ditch Folders and Embrace Metadata
Professional Services

Why Professional Services Firms Should Ditch Folders and Embrace Metadata

3y

Why Professional Services Firms Should Ditch Folde...

In the past decade, the professional services industry has transformed significantly. Digital disruptions, increased competition, and changing market ...

View resource
2 Vital keys to Remaining Competitive for Professional Services Firms

2 Vital keys to Remaining Competitive for Professional Services Firms

3y

2 Vital keys to Remaining Competitive for Professi...

In recent months, professional services firms are facing more pressure than ever to deliver value to clients. Often, clients look at the firms own inf...

View resource
Turn Accounts Payable into a value-engine
Accounting Firms

Turn Accounts Payable into a value-engine

3y

Turn Accounts Payable into a value-engine

In a world of instant results and automated workloads, the potential for AP to drive insights and transform results is enormous. But, if you’re still ...

View resource
Digital Links: A guide to MTD in 2021
Making Tax Digital

Digital Links: A guide to MTD in 2021

3y

Digital Links: A guide to MTD in 2021

The first phase of Making Tax Digital (MTD) saw the requirement for the digital submission of the VAT Return using compliant software. That’s now behi...

View resource