# Revenue Scotland and Tax Powers Act 2014, Section 178: Reasonable excuse for failure to make return or pay tax


(1) If P satisfies Revenue Scotland or (on appeal) the tribunal that there is a reasonable excuse for a failure to make a return, liability to a penalty under sections 159 to 167 does not arise in relation to that failure.
(2) If P satisfies Revenue Scotland or (on appeal) the tribunal that there is a reasonable excuse for a failure to make a payment, liability to a penalty under sections 168 to 173 does not arise in relation to that failure.
(3) For the purposes of subsections (1) and (2)—
(a) an insufficiency of funds is not a reasonable excuse unless attributable to events outside P's control,
(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/asp/2014/16/section/178 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/revenue-scotland-and-tax-powers-act-2014/section-178
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.