More Tax Return Penalty Excuses

Following on from the post on tax return penalties, here are another list of actual excuses (and a few comments) offered by taxpayers asking for a late-filing penalty to be removed…

• My pet dog ate my tax return (and all the reminders obviously)
• I was up a mountain in Wales and couldn’t find a postbox or get an internet signal (all year?!)
• I fell in with the wrong crowd
• I’ve been travelling the world, trying to escape from a foreign intelligence agency (Mr J Bond?)
• Barack Obama is in charge of my finances
• I’ve been busy looking after a flock of escaped parrots and some fox cubs (so much more convincing adding the foxes)
• A work colleague borrowed my tax return, to photocopy it, and didn’t give it back
• I live in a camper van in a supermarket car park
• My girlfriend’s pregnant
• I was in Australia (where, obviously, they have no internet access)

You couldn’t make these up. If you used one of these , then you should be embarrassed!