CH96100 - Penalties for VAT and Excise Wrongdoing: How to process a penalty: Raising a penalty assessment
Once a person has become liable to a penalty for a VAT or Excise wrongdoing, see CH91200, we will send them a penalty assessment.
This will tell the person what they owe and when they must pay it. »Ê¹ÚÌåÓýapp penalty assessment is enforceable in the same way as an assessment to tax.
Before you issue the penalty assessment you must decide
- the wrongdoing(s) the penalty relates to
- the amount of the penalty, see CH95550.
A penalty assessment may be combined with an assessment to tax or duty.
A penalty for handling goods subject to unpaid excise duty, see CH91550, is not dependent on the ability to raise a corresponding assessment to duty.
Where the penalty relates to the unauthorised issue of a VAT invoice, see CH91350, any reference in this guidance to an ‘assessment to tax� includes a ‘demand for recovery as a debt due to the Crown�.
For example
An unregistered trader issued invoices charging VAT to customers. We cannot raise an assessment to recover the ‘VAT� because the amounts involved are not VAT. In these circumstances the amount representing the ‘VAT� charged on the invoices would be dealt with by a demand for recovery, not an assessment.