Land Transaction Tax and Anti-avoidance of Devolved Taxes (Wales) Act 2017 section 45

Reasonable excuse defence extended to new penalty provisions

Section 45 of Schedule 23 amends the reasonable excuse provision in the Tax Collection and Management (Wales) Act 2016, ensuring that the defence of reasonable excuse also applies to the new penalty regime introduced by section 122A.

• This paragraph amends section 126 of the Tax Collection and Management (Wales) Act 2016, which deals with reasonable excuse for failures to make tax returns or pay tax.
• The amendment updates a cross-reference in subsection (2) of section 126, so that it refers to both section 122 and the newly inserted section 122A.
• The practical effect is that taxpayers who can demonstrate a reasonable excuse for a failure covered by the new section 122A penalty provisions will be able to rely on that defence, just as they already can for penalties under section 122.
• This is a consequential amendment ensuring that the existing safeguard of a reasonable excuse defence is consistently available across both the original and newly introduced penalty provisions.