FHDDS51700 | Penalties, sanctions and offences: penalties – policy: Trading without approval - Company and company officers - officer of a company liable to a penalty

Note: The process for raising penalties against company officers is still to be finalised. This will be updated in due course.

An officer of a company may personally be liable to pay all or part of a penalty assessed against the company where:

· a company is liable to a penalty for a deliberate contravention, and

· the contravention is attributable to the actions of an officer or officers of the company (what we mean by officer is covered in FHDDS51715).

This is provided for in para 8 of Schedule 13 to the Finance (No 2) Act 2017.

The use of this provision is limited to circumstances where:

· the company officer gained or attempted to gain personally from trading without approval, or

· the company is insolvent or likely to become insolvent.

These company officers are known as ‘liable officers’ in this guidance.

In the limited circumstances where it applies, the power gives us the right to recover all or part of the penalty from the liable officer. However, it is important to note that the penalty is always assessed on the company. This means that we do not assess the liable officers for the penalty, but we must send each liable officer a personal liability notice.

We cannot recover more than 100 per cent of the penalty from the company and its liable officers. See CH406200 for general guidance about how to apportion the penalty between the liable officers.