LSH, your case is just like ours and we are not alone. We have taken HMRC's appeal and review process as far as we can and have now appealed to the First Tier Tribunal as indeed Rachel McGreevy did. Under Section 9 of Form T242 "Making an Appeal : Explanatory Leaflet" we have made every effort to remedy our situation with HMRC and have our NRCGT Late Filing penalties cancelled. We even cited Rachel McGreevy's case which, in essence, is the same as ours and gave HMRC another chance to cancel our penalties but all HMRC did was send us curt letter telling us to appeal to the independent Tribunal.
In addition, we asked for information under FOIA on the number of cases where Late Filing penalties were cancelled due to the client being ignorant of the process for notifying NRCGT. HMRC confirmed they have this information but we can't have it because it would take too long (more than 3.5 days or £600) to search for it. We refined our request to how many they found in these time and cost restraints but this too was refused. We have seen at least two cases on this Forum and others elsewhere stating penalties cancelled with ignorance being the "excuse" and feel even one case would set the precedent to cancel our penalties and, indeed, all penalties for similar cases. We have appealed HMRC's refusal to the FOI Review panel which is part of HMRC so are not hopeful of a positive outcome.
We wrote to our MP, this being the MP in the constituency where we last lived and are still registered to vote and he wrote to the Minister concerned who passed our letter onto Jon Thompson, CEO of HMRC. This is who we have been corresponding with, by e-mail, since our second review was rejected.
We would suggest writing to your MP, addressing all HMRC correspondence to Jon Thompson (
jon.thompson@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk) and DO NOT pay the fine.
Finally, in our appeal, we have asked the judge to consider compensation, given the stress and anxiety caused and the time we have had to commit to this issue over the past twelve months. In the fourteen years we have been out of the UK and before we left the UK, we have never been late filing any Tax requirement, never been fined so we find it appalling to be fined in this manner especially as HMRC have confirmed our computations that no NRCGT was due on any of the three properties we sold. Take heart and good luck!! Fight the ba****rds................. and how much of taxpayers money is HMRC spending to defend the indefensible!!