This was an appeal against a default surcharge for which the appellant argued that he had a reasonable excuse.

The appellant’s grounds of appeal were that he was unable to access his online account due to changes made by HMRC without his knowledge or agreement. The appellant had changed his original password and ID in 2016. The appellant attempted to pay his VAT on time but was prevented from doing so because the system did not recognise either his ID number or password.

After a number of attempts to gain access to the account, the appellant contacted the HMRC webchat helpline, which was unable to resolve the problem and suggested that he contacted technical support. He did this only to be told that there was no-one available to speak to him until after the weekend – three days later. 

On the Monday morning, the appellant