Finance Act 2017

Reasonable excuse

4 (1) A failure by any person to comply with any requirement mentioned in paragraph 1 or 2 does not give rise to a liability to a penalty under this Schedule if the person concerned satisfies—

(a) the Commissioners, or

(b) on appeal, a tribunal,

that there is a reasonable excuse for the failure.

(2) A failure for which there is a reasonable excuse is to be disregarded for the purposes of paragraph 1(5).

(3) For the purposes of this paragraph, in the case of a person (P)—

(a) an insufficiency of funds is not a reasonable excuse unless attributable to events outside P’s control;

(b) where P relies on another person to do anything, that is not a reasonable excuse unless P took reasonable care to avoid the relevant failure;

(c) where P had a reasonable excuse for the failure but the excuse has ceased, P is to be treated as having continued to have the excuse if the failure is remedied without unreasonable delay after the excuse ceased.