HMRC's 10 oddest late tax return excuses

Clients may often give their accountants wild excuses for handing in records late, but it appears some also take a similar tack with the Revenue.

Ahead of the 31 January self assessment deadline, HMRC published its list of its oddest 10 excuses it has received for those who failed to file on time - ranging from a dead goldfish to an altercation with a bovine animal.

The list includes:

1. My pet goldfish died (self-employed builder)
2. I had a run-in with a cow (Midlands farmer)
3. After seeing a volcanic eruption on the news, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else (London woman)
4. My wife won’t give me my mail (self-employed trader)
5. My husband told me the deadline was 31 March, and I believed him (Leicester hairdresser)
6. I’ve been far too busy touring the country with my one-man play (Coventry writer)
7. My bad back means I can’t go upstairs. That’s where my tax return is (a working taxi driver)
8. I’ve been cruising round the world in my yacht, and only picking up post when I’m on dry land (South East man)
9. Our business doesn’t really do anything (Kent financial services firm)
10. I’ve been too busy submitting my clients’ tax returns (London accountant)

All of the above who chanced their arm received a £100 late filing penalty.

The HMRC press release has attracted a fair bit of comment on Twitter (see below), but we suspect AccountingWEB members have experienced even weirder ones.

HMRC has released top 10 unacceptable reasons for filing tax return late http://t.co/hOx0xBn8m0 deadline 31 Jan. Poor goldfish though :-)

— Nigel Holmes (@AW_NigelHolmes) January 2, 2014

And it appears the festive season isn’t an impediment to filing your tax return as 1,566 people filed theirs online on Christmas day; 144 of these were submitted before Christmas lunch at 1pm.

In total over the three-day Christmas period, the figure filed rose 12% on last year to 23,059.

Around 17,000 of these were on Christmas Eve, 1,566 on Christmas Day and 4,493 on Boxing day.

HMRC’s director general of personal tax, Ruth Owen, commented: “There will always be unforeseen events that mean a taxpayer could not file their tax return on time.

“However, your pet goldfish passing away isn’t one of them.”

Can you top any of the lame excuses mentioned by HMRC? Post the strangest and most amusing ones you've heard (and perhaps prevented HMRC from hearing) below. Or follow this link to for more serious explanations of what constitutes a reasonable excuse.