Careless conduct and professional advice

Key points

• A taxpayer who consults an adviser that he reasonably believes to be competent who provides that adviser with the relevant information and who checks the adviser’s work to the extent that he can and then implements that advice is not careless.
• The level of advice that it is reasonable to take depends on the circumstances.
• If having taken advice a reasonable person would think this is simply too good to be true and especially if the actual person involved expresses that view in writing the adviser should be asked to explain more.
• A taxpayer may take some steps to avoid being branded as ‘careless’ by HMRC – these are easy steps but can be overlooked.

‘There are few who would gainsay the proposition that tax law can be complicated and difficult for taxpayers to understand and thus it is only to be expected that...