An appeal by a Company and its Senior Accounting Officer (‘SAO’) in respect of penalties has been dismissed by the First-Tier Tribunal and this may lead to toughened stance from HMRC regarding SAO regime penalties in the future. This could in turn impact a company’s Business Risk Review rating which determines the level of scrutiny that HMRC apply to large businesses.
Background
The case related to a failure by the Group and Company SAO to include two dormant companies within the group, on the SAO certificates. The group included almost 100 companies and HMRC initially found that four companies that had previously been included in the Group’s certification were missing in the year in question. The Group confirmed that two of those four companies had been struck off in the year but that the other two had been inadvertently missed off.
The SAO legislation permits HMRC to charge fixed penalties of £5,000 on:
Liability to a penalty does not arise where the SAO/company has a reasonable excuse for the failure.
