Finance (No. 2) Act 2017

Reasonable excuse

48 (1) Liability to a penalty under this Part of this Schedule does not arise in relation to a particular failure to comply if the person concerned (P) satisfies HMRC or the relevant tribunal (as the case may be) that there is a reasonable excuse for the failure.

(2) For this purpose—

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

(b) where P relied on any other person to do anything, that cannot be a reasonable excuse unless P took reasonable care to avoid the failure,

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

(d) reliance on advice is to be taken automatically not to be a reasonable excuse if the advice was addressed to, or was given to, a person other than P or takes no account of P’s individual circumstances.