Appealing a penalty for failing to pay APNs - Taxpayer win

[foobar]

Good decision here for taxpayer who did not have funds for his APNs...

http://financeandtax.decisions.tribu...30/TC06568.pdf

Judge says (of HMRC) -
"a reasonable person would be entitled to assume that a nearly eight year silence from HMRC
meant that there was unlikely to be much of a chance of having to pay the tax on the amendments,
and certainly not within a few months of a demand for tax coming out of the blue. Even if
they were told that the appeals had sprung to life and were to be contested before this
tribunal, a reasonable person would be entitled to assume that they would have much
longer than a few months from such an intimation to the date when any tax would have
to be paid."

[DaveB]

Also :

72. So it seems that HMRC accept that they cannot enforce payment of Class 4 NICs established by the APNs and corrective action under the follower notices. Yet HMRC acknowledged in their letter of 16 October 2017 that for Class 4 the position is the same as for income tax, that LA80 runs from the due date. If so, how can they then enforce the income tax liabilities, given that for Class 4 NICs the due dates are the same as they are for income tax. Either they can enforce the Class 4 NICs or they can’t enforce the income tax debts.

73. That is a conundrum which I do not have to solve. But no doubt fertile minds will have considered the implications of the HMRC statements which will have been made to many others in the appellant’s position.