In Tabrez Akhtar t/a Crawley News and Post Office v HMRC [2017] TC6078 late filing penalties were dismissed: HMRC had unlogged a return in error.
SME Tax News
In Darren Billington v HMRC [2017] TC06147 the FTT dismissed a late application to lodge an appeal against penalties raised for failure to act on an information notice: there was excessive delay and an insufficient excuse for the underlying failure.
In Whittaker v Concept Fiduciaries Ltd, Guernsey Judgment 15/2017, Guernsey’s Royal Court considered the UK rules on rectification of advisers' errors in setting up a trust.
Pilots working for Ryanair have been under tax enquiries from both the UK and German tax authorities.
As part of HMRC’s approach to dealing with the new offence of Criminal Facilitation of Tax Evasion, it has given details of how an organisation can self-report any such offence discovered.
The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has issued a ‘future work programme’ identifying areas that it will address in the short term, the next 12 months and in the medium term.
In Rachel McGreevy v HMRC [2017] TC06109 penalties for a late non-resident capital gains tax return were cancelled; no disposal was proved in the relevant tax year, the taxpayer had a reasonable excuse or special circumstances.
In M Watts v Revenue Scotland [2017] FTSTC 1 the Scottish tax tribunal upheld penalties of £890 for a late LBTT return despite no tax being due; ignorance of the law was no excuse for the self-represented tax payer.
In J Cooney (as representative partners of Citygate Partnership) v HMRC [2017] TC05950, the First- Tier Tribunal (FTT) agreed that the partnership had a reasonable excuse for the late return and HMRC should have given a special circumstances reduction as they had the individual partners’ returns.
In Jörg Märtin v HMRC TC05942, the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) held that where there was no evidence of a valid reason for HMRC to have delayed dealing with an enquiry they had to issue a closure notice.