TC09619 - [2025] UKFTT 01020 (TC)

This is an income tax case. In his tax returns for the tax years 2016/2017-2021/2022 (“the taxyears in question”), the appellant has claimed that certain items of expenditure which he incurred during those years were deductible from his income. In each of these years, the appellant was employed as a bus driver by the company Arriva (“Arriva”).The appellant’s case is that these expenses were, essentially, incurred on the provision of; protective equipment during the Covid pandemic; accommodation for himself and his family during the pandemic; equipment necessary to enable him to carry out his functions as a bus driver following a road traffic accident in November 2016.

The original receipts for these expenses were unavailable as, according to the appellant, they had been stored in his loft and had been eaten by rodents.

HMRC do not consider that the appellant has been able to justify to them that these expenses were incurred at all, and even if they were, they were not incurred wholly exclusively and necessarily in the performance of his duties as a bus driver.

Accordingly, they have issued discovery assessments for the tax years 2016/2017-2018/2019 for £6,403 (“the discovery assessments”) and, following enquiries into the appellant’s tax returns for 2019/2020-2021/2022, issued closure notices for those years assessing a further £11,964 to income tax (“the closure notices”). They have also issued a penalty assessment for £10,928.83 (“the penalty assessment”) for submitting deliberately inaccurate tax returns.

For the reasons given below we have dismissed the appellant’s appeals against the additional income tax and the penalty.

There was no dispute about the relevant law which we have set out in Appendix 1.