Out in the cold

KEY POINTS

• Penalties for failing to file a partnership return.
• Liability of all partners present all or part of the year.
• Compatibility with human rights legislation.
• Lack of HMRC online partnership filing software.

The UK’s tax administration system struggles to deal adequately with partnerships in some respects. For example in my article Agreeing to disagree I pointed out the difficulties that can arise when there is a disagreement between partners about the allocation of partnership profits.

A further problem for partners was highlighted in a recent First-tier Tribunal case Jarvis (TC2160) more on which later.

The particular problem faced by partners such as the taxpayer Mrs Jarvis in the aforementioned case is that the UK tax legislation does not give every partner the right to appeal against...