Received an unfair penalty from HMRC? We can review your position and, if we consider your penalty to be unfair, can defend your position that accurately reflects the circumstances of your case leading to waived or much-reduced penalties. Speak to a member of our team today.

HMRC uses financial penalties to punish people and businesses it believes have failed to fully comply with their tax obligations. The financial penalties re-enforce HMRC’s fight against tax evasion. The imposition of financial penalties allows HMRC to bring in additional revenue from its compliance activities, and helps to reduce the existing tax gap in the UK of £31 billion. Compliance yields (the total monies collected through HMRC investigations) have continually increased since the introduction of HMRC’s current penalty powers.

HMRC will impose financial penalties on taxpayers for the following reasons:

• Penalties for late filing of returns and paperwork or late payment

• Penalties for errors on returns, payments and paperwork

• Failure to notify penalty

• Failure to comply with information, inspection and data gathering powers.

While investigating, HMRC will want to understand how and why the late filing, error or failure occurred and will closely scrutinise your underlying behaviour at the time. This conduct/behaviour is key to HMRC in deciding whether a financial penalty should be charged and determining the appropriate level of any penalty.

In more serious cases, HMRC may issue Personal Liability Notices (PLNs) to hold company officers personally liable. Read more on PLNs here.

Unfair penalty? We can help

We find that HMRC officers often form a view on the appropriate level of financial penalty without fully considering the facts of the case. This often results in HMRC charging unfair penalties. Buzzacott have a proven track record in mitigating and challenging HMRC penalties to best protect our clients. If we consider HMRC’s penalty to be unfair and disproportionate, we will defend your position by presenting robust, tailored arguments that accurately reflect the circumstances of your case leading to waived or much-reduced penalties.

Where appropriate, we will present ‘reasonable excuse’ and/or ‘innocent error’ arguments to waive or mitigate your penalty. Our expert knowledge of how HMRC penalty systems work ensures that our clients will never pay unnecessary penalties. Whenever possible, we will negotiate the suspension of any penalty so you do not have to pay the penalty to HMRC. In cases where we do accept penalties are due, we will work with HMRC to agree much reduced penalty amounts.

We provide a discreet and comprehensive service that is tailored to meet your unique needs and protect your interests. We will present you with all available options and what the consequences of taking each option will be. We aim to formulate and agree an overall strategy so as to try to conclude matters quickly and efficiently.