The case of Robert Wells (TC2172) is ostensibly about a simple penalty for belated notification of a liability to register for VAT, but there was a twist which shows how readily business taxes fail to interact
It’s a familiar kind of story. Mr Wells is an artist selling his creations through galleries (they are semi-impressionist townscapes in general and he also does concept sketching for architects but art criticism/appreciation is not the focus of this article). Being an artist he delegates all his worldly concerns to his accountant. For whatever precise reason he missed the obligation to register for VAT in 2006/07. This subsisted until 2011 when HMRC referred to his income tax return and found that he probably ought to have been VAT registered. The apparent oversight was that...
