HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is set to waive fines for taxpayers who file their tax returns late, providing that they can prove that the delay was because of COVID-19.<\/p>\n
HMRC confirmed the news in a statement, with the 31 January filing deadline looming. The decision was taken with England entering a national lockdown and Wales and Scotland also under lockdown restrictions, with concerns being raised over the pressure on workers to meet the deadline.<\/p>\n
For example, with schools teaching remotely for the majority of students other than key workers and vulnerable children, the pressures of homeschooling could be accepted as a reasonable reason for a delay in tax filing.<\/p>\n
Showing that either the individual, a member of their household or their accountant has had coronavirus could also be accepted as a valid reason for delay.<\/p>\n
Approximately 12 million people file their own tax return because they are either self-employed, a landlord or have a second form of income, with HMRC stating that half of these individuals had filed a return as of 4 January 2021, meaning that millions could benefit from the waiving of fines for late returns.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for HMRC said: \u201cWe want to encourage as many people as possible to file on time even if they can\u2019t pay their tax straight away.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut where a customer is unable to do so because of the impact of Covid-19 we will accept they have a reasonable excuse and cancel penalties, provided they manage to file as soon as possible after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
For help and advice on matters relating to self-assessment, contact our expert team today.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is set to waive fines for taxpayers who file their tax returns late, providing that they can prove that the delay was because of COVID-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,84,28,75,108,87,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3899,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3898\/revisions\/3899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}