Taxpayer’s actions were reasonable

The taxpayer had successfully filed her returns online for the years 2011-12 to 2018-19. For 2019-20 and 2020-21 HMRC in effect extended the filing deadline to 28 February. According to HMRC’s records the taxpayer filed her 2019-20 return late – on 1 March 2021. Its records showed further that at the same time the taxpayer opted to receive communications from HMRC electronically to her personal tax account. The tribunal considered that she had done this inadvertently; she had ticked the relevant boxes while completing her return without understanding the import of her action. The judges considered the taxpayer was focusing on ensuring that her tax return was ‘properly submitted and that she would not have realised that she was also exposing herself to a wholly different way of receiving communications from HMRC’. It was therefore reasonable for her not to take note of the generic email notifications...