Finance Act 2021

Reasonable excuse

19 (1) Liability to a penalty point or a penalty under this Schedule does not arise in respect of a failure to make a return if the person satisfies HMRC (or on appeal, the tribunal) that the person had 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 the person’s control,

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

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

(3) In this paragraph “tribunal” means the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal (as appropriate by virtue of paragraph 23(1)).