Time penalty

A company appealed against a penalty issued for the late filing of a PAYE tax return. The company’s accountants had attempted to file the return online on 12 April 2010.

However it was rejected due to the return containing an error namely it gave the tax year as 2008 instead of 2010. HMRC imposed a penalty and the company appealed.

The Revenue said that with the company having received two messages that the online filing had failed it should have made enquiries on the helpline to find out why the messages had been sent.

While reliance on an accountant had been accepted as a reasonable excuse in the past the First-tier Tribunal found that in this instance a simple mistake had been made which could easily have been rectified had the company’s accountant contacted HMRC about the error...