This week’s opinion

One thing that makes tax such an interesting career is that I am constantly learning new things. Take PAYE penalties. Had you asked me last week I would have said that if a company’s P35 was wrong it could trigger a penalty. So far so good. But if you had asked what made a P35 wrong my off-the-cuff response would probably have been that the company had operated PAYE incorrectly and so the P35 did not reflect that which was due. I suspect that I would not have been alone in that answer. This point was tested in a First-tier Tribunal case  Fab Cleaning Management.

The result is at least to me rather surprising. The judge looked at the legal requirements. A company must make a return of amount paid to employees and of the tax deducted from those payments. The company deducted the wrong...