Summary 

This was an appeal by the appellant against penalties for failing to submit timely VAT returns of the VAT periods 5/23, 8/23 and 11/23 under the new penalty regime that came into force in 2021. HMRC had imposed late submission penalty points for each of these periods and had also charged the appellant first late payment penalties for each of these periods. 

Background 

A taxpayer is not liable to either penalty points or a financial penalty for late submission, or for a late payment penalty if they can establish that they had a reasonable excuse for their failure and put that failure right without unreasonable delay after the excuse had ended. 

It is statutorily provided that neither an insufficiency of funds (unless attributable to events outside the taxpayer’s control) nor reliance on another person to do anything (unless the person took reasonable care to avoid the