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Couldn’t careless? Reasonable care and the role of professional advisers

Whilst taking professional advice will usually mean a taxpayer has taken reasonable care, not taking advice does not necessarily mean a taxpayer has been careless, write Adam Craggs and Constantine Christofi (RPC).

‘No penalties for innocent mistakes’

The penalties regime is designed to ‘encourage’ voluntary compliance by taxpayers with their tax obligations. Suffice to say that the tax system in the UK is far from straightforward. If a taxpayer takes reasonable care but gets something wrong nonetheless whilst they will have to pay any tax that they ought to have paid (with interest) they will not be penalised for their error. That though begs the question what does taking ‘reasonable care’ involve?

The focus in this article is on penalties imposed under FA 2007 Sch 24 the main source of HMRC’s powers to impose penalties for errors and inaccuracies in documents submitted to...

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