Yvette Nunn sees a trend towards aggressive tax cases as HMRC increasingly takes a hard line over minor infringements of tax rules, which oftentimes are down to trivial errors, with the recent cases of J & W Brown and Steady a prime example with trivial fines heading to court
I am becoming increasingly concerned about the harsh line being taken by some in the pursuit of penalties against ordinary taxpayers. My concern is deepened by the waste of public resources and would rather see this public money being used to educate HMRC staff in their support of taxpayers who have done their best to comply.
As an avid reader of tax cases, I am struck with increasing regularity as to why some of the situations heard had to reach a tribunal for sense to prevail. It is nothing short of a waste of everyone’s time (let alone stress) and public resources when a case has to be heard by a tribunal for no logical reason.
May I claim credit for the introduction of the suspended tax penalty? As an ATT representative many moons ago, when the current penalty regime was a proposal in the pipeline, HMRC stressed that penalties were there to educate.
