CH84610 - Penalties for Inaccuracies: Other penalty issues: Company penalties: Officer of a company liable to a penalty
You must check the date from which these rules apply for the tax or duty you are dealing with. See CH81011 for full details.
Where
- a company is liable to a penalty for a deliberate inaccuracy in a return or other document, and
- the inaccuracy arose from the deliberate action of an officer of the company, see CH84620,
we can look to the officer as well as the company for payment of all or part of the penalty, see CH84640. These officers are known as ‘liable officers’ in this guidance.
This gives us an alternative right to recover all or part of the penalty from the company officer(s) if the company does not pay it. But the penalty is always assessed on the company because it is the company’s document that contains the inaccuracy. We do not assess the liable officers.
Where there is more than one inaccuracy, see CH82180, in a document, each deliberate inaccuracy should be considered separately for the purpose of establishing whether it should be attributed to an officer or officers.
You cannot recover more than 100% of the penalty from the company and its liable officers.
