CH160500 - Reasonable excuse: physical illness

The physical illness must be serious enough that it prevented the person from meeting their obligation immediately before or on the deadline and from that date to the time the obligation was met. Any serious or life-threatening illness (for example, coma, heart attack, stroke) would usually be accepted as a reasonable excuse.

Where the person knows in advance that they will be in hospital or convalescing for a long time, they should normally have made suitable arrangements for meeting their obligation. There may however be circumstances where this was not possible, for example, in case of emergency or short-notice admission to hospital.

The serious illness of the person, their partner or a close relative should only be accepted if the situation took up a great deal of the person ’s time and resources and prevented them from being able to meet the relevant obligation or put in place other arrangements for the obligation to be met.

Having a physical disability is not in itself, an excuse for a person failing to meet their tax obligations. However, if a person claims that they have not been able to comply with their obligations because of a physical illness or disability, you should carefully consider:

  • the impact of any impairment on the person’s ability to comply with their tax obligations, and
  • how this prevented them from complying with this obligation.

A person has a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 (EA) if he or she has a physical or mental impairment and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day to day activities.

According to the EA, the effect of an impairment is long term if:

  • it has lasted 12 months, or,
  • the total period affected is likely to be at least 12 months, or,
  • the effect is likely to last for the rest of the life of the person concerned.

The Act describes substantial effect as one that is more than a minor or trivial effect.

Dealing with cases where physical illness is a key consideration

Every failure should be considered on its own facts. We would not usually accept the same reasonable excuse on more than one occasion. This is because we would expect any person who knows they will find it difficult to meet a requirement because of an existing disability, to make every reasonable effort to anticipate this and make alternative arrangements.

In some cases the person may have a reasonable excuse for more than one occasion based on the specific facts, (for example, if they have more than one heart attack or stroke) or because it takes a considerable period of time for them to recover to a level where they can make arrangements to meet their tax obligations.

If a person is subject to a fluctuating condition which they know is likely to reoccur, you should consider whether or not it is reasonable to expect them to put plans in place to ensure they comply with their obligations.

For more predictable conditions (even if they are fluctuating), we would expect the customer to take steps to ensure they put plans in place to meet their obligation.

Example 1

Mr. X has a hip problem and requires surgery within the next couple of months. We would expect Mr. X to take steps to make arrangements to enable him to meet any obligations which may become due whilst he is in hospital. If Mr. X failed to make such arrangements, he would not have a reasonable excuse

Mr. X might have a reasonable excuse if his treatment meant he was unable to make arrangements, or otherwise compromised his ability to meet his obligations.

Example 2

Mrs. Y has had a stroke and has been admitted to hospital. Mrs. Y has not been able to make any arrangements to meet any obligations which will become due whilst she is unexpectedly in hospital, so in this scenario we would accept Mrs. Y has a reasonable excuse.