# Finance Act 2017, Paragraph 4


(1) A failure by any person to comply with any requirement mentioned in paragraph 1 or 2 does not give rise to a liability to a penalty under this Schedule if the person concerned satisfies—
(a) the Commissioners, or
(b) on appeal, a tribunal,
that there is a reasonable excuse for the failure.
(2) A failure for which there is a reasonable excuse is to be disregarded for the purposes of paragraph 1(5).
(3) For the purposes of this paragraph, in the case of a person (P)—
(a) an insufficiency of funds is not a reasonable excuse unless attributable to events outside P's control;
(b) where P relies on another person to do anything, that is not a reasonable excuse unless P took reasonable care to avoid the relevant failure;
(c) where P had a reasonable excuse for the failure but the excuse has ceased, P is to be treated as having continued to have the excuse if the failure is remedied without unreasonable delay after the excuse ceased.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/10/schedule/9/paragraph/4 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/finance-act-2017/schedule-9/paragraph-4
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.