I once felt the wincing pain of that £100 fine.
To avoid it I did a bit of over-the-top grovelling and offered some colourful reasons but I was met with the proverbial HMRC deaf ear...
my excuse went as follows.
"I was walking along the seafront heading to my accountants when a gust of wind came along and blew all my cheque stubs into the sea. The cheque stubs were promptly eaten by a shoal of darting avaricious mackeral just up from those balmy waters of further south. Needless to say I was horrified and was thinking of plunging into the sea to give chase to the mackeral when a passing fisherman pointed out the pointlessness of that idea. A while later the mackeral all floated to the surface looking decidedly ill...clearly the figures on the cheque stubs were indigestible !!
So as you can see it wasnt my fault"
I cant think why they didnt buy that one as it was the gospel truth...so it was
