LONDON: People who missed the deadline for filing their tax returns have been let off the £100 fine, HM Revenue & Customs has confirmed.
But the fine has only been waived for individuals and small businesses who have a “good reason for sending it in late”.
An HMRC spokesman told Sky News it wants to use more of its resources to target major tax avoiders rather than “penalising ordinary people”.
The story was first reported by the Daily Telegraph after it obtained a leaked memo, and could affect nearly 900,000 people.
The memo reveals that staff were asked to write off the fine without further investigation for those who could show mitigating circumstances.
Our penalty regime is intended to influence customer behaviour, but also be clear and cost-effective, fair and proportionate,” it said.
The current way of managing penalties does not meet these objectives, and so we have decided to take a more proportionate approach where a customer has filed their return late, and then appealed against their penalty.
This means that in the vast majority of cases we will be accepting the customer’s grounds for appeal, and we can cancel the penalty.”
A total of 890,000 people reportedly missed the 31 January deadline for completing self-assessment forms.
An HMRC spokesman told Sky News: “We’ve been clear we want to focus more and more of our resources on investigating major tax avoidance and evasion rather than penalising ordinary people who are trying to do the right thing.
But no one will be let off the fine unless they’ve now sent in their return and have a good reason for sending it in late.
This is part of our planned approach to penalty appeals, particularly for small businesses and individuals who have sent their tax return in late.”
On HMRC’s website it states that a reasonable excuse for missing the deadline is “normally something unexpected or outside your control that stopped you meeting a tax obligation”.
This includes the recent death of a partner, an unexpected stay in hospital, computer failures, service issues with HMRC’s online services, a fire which prevented the completion of a tax return or postal delays.
