Johnson and Johnson: careless despite white space disclosure

The First-tier Tribunal has reaffirmed, in Johnson and Johnson, that when an agent had been careless when completing the tax return, the inclusion of white space disclosures as a way of ‘hedging their bets’ does not prevent that negligence. It was argued that the disclosure complied with SP 1/06 as it provided enough information for an HMRC officer to realise the self-assessment was insufficient. However, the FTT held that this argument was misconceived. SP 1/06 concerned the information available to a hypothetical officer for the purpose of issuing a discovery assessment; it was not a defence against careless behaviour.