# Finance Act 2020, Paragraph 54


(1) Liability to a penalty under paragraph 52 or 53 in relation to a failure to make a return does not arise if the person (“P”) satisfies HMRC or (on appeal) the tribunal that there is a reasonable excuse for the failure.
(2) For that purpose—
(a) an insufficiency of funds is not a reasonable excuse,
(b) where P relies on any other person to do anything, that is not a reasonable excuse unless P took reasonable care to avoid the failure, and
(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/2020/14/schedule/8/paragraph/54 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/finance-act-2020/schedule-8/paragraph-54
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.