John Mueller of Google answered another question on Reddit around a site that has a legacy Google spam penalty and the site simply won't recover, even after a lot of effort. So you know, Google has said before sometimes it is to start fresh with a new site instead of trying to dig yourself out of a penalty.
Here too, John Mueller of Google is offering the same advice. John said "if there's a lot of bad history associated with that, you either have to live with it, clean it up as much as possible, or move to a different domain." He said there is "no "reset button" for a domain, we don't even have that internally," to make a domain crystal clean with the click of a button. It doesn't work that way.
Here is what John wrote:
There's no "reset button" for a domain, we don't even have that internally, so a manual review wouldn't change anything there. If there's a lot of bad history associated with that, you either have to live with it, clean it up as much as possible, or move to a different domain. I realize that can be a hassle, but it's the same with any kind of business, cleaning up a bad name/reputation can be a lot of work, and it's hard to say ahead of time if it'll be worth it in the end.
Here is an old Matt Cutts video on the same topic:
Forum discussion at Reddit.
