Taxpayer wins £1.7k tribunal case after HMRC emails went to junk

Denise Howarth, a self-assessment taxpayer with a previously spotless record, has successfully overturned £1,770 in fines and interest after a tribunal found that HMRC’s penalty emails had ended up in her junk folder—then vanished.

The First Tier Tribunal (FTT) accepted Howarth’s explanation that she was unaware of the fines until debt collectors contacted her, despite HMRC’s system registering the messages as “delivered.”

In a move likely to prompt further scrutiny of HMRC’s digital notification process, the FTT ruled that the penalties were not validly communicated and that Howarth had a reasonable excuse for missing the filing deadline for her 2020–21 tax return.

The case also saw the tribunal side with Howarth over a separate £100 fine issued for the previous tax year.

While HMRC’s records claimed her 2019–20 return was submitted one day late, the FTT found that the return had in fact been filed on time, undercutting the reliability of the department’s automated timestamp system.

Howarth, who has been in the self-assessment system since 2004 and filing online since 2013, had never previously missed a deadline. Her appeal to the tribunal was itself filed late, but the judges allowed it to proceed, citing the circumstances and her strong compliance history.

In their judgment, the tribunal was clear: the digital delivery of a message to an email account is not the same as effective communication—particularly when the message never reaches the taxpayer’s attention.

This nuance in digital correspondence could have broader implications for how HMRC handles online communications, especially as it continues to pivot away from paper.

The ruling provides a reminder to taxpayers to regularly check their junk folders, and perhaps more importantly, to keep records of sent returns and correspondence.

For HMRC, it’s a wake-up call on the limits of automated systems and the need for human review in enforcement processes.