HMRC reveals the 10 worst excuses for late tax returns

I was in Austalia…

Evidently travelling to the other side of the world is not a reasonable excuse for filing your tax return late.

HMRC has revealed its annual top 10 late filing excuses and some of them are hilarious!

• My pet dog ate my tax return and all the reminders
• I was up a mountain in Wales and couldn’t find a postbox or get an internet signal
• I fell in with the wrong crowd
• I’ve been travelling the world, trying to escape from a foreign intelligence agency
• Barack Obama is in charge of my finances
• I’ve been busy looking after a flock of escaped parrots and some fox cubs
• A work colleague borrowed my tax return to photocopy it and didn’t give me it back
• I live in a campervan in a supermarket car park
• My girlfriend is pregnant
• I was in Australia

Surprisingly none of the excuses were accepted by HMRC, and £100 late payment fines were subsequently imposed.

If you do file your tax return late, you are within your rights to appeal as long as the excuse you give is deemed ‘reasonable’ by HMRC. For more information please visit the Government website for Information on late filing
With the tax return deadline fast approaching what better time to invest in a professional to do your return for you? 

Please contact me for an informal chat or visit the Hello Accountancy website for more information.