CH123260 - Offshore matters: requirement to correct certain offshore tax non-compliance: time limit for corrections

You must check the date from which these rules apply for the tax or duty you are dealing with. See CH123050 for full details.

Offshore tax non-compliance can be corrected on or before 30 September 2018 in a number of ways, however, a person will not be liable to penalties for failing to correct by 30 September 2018 in the following limited circumstances where information is provided later through certain channels. These are

  • notifying via the Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF),
  • using the Contractual Disclosure Facility (CDF),
  • informing the person conducting an enquiry.

The time-limits for each method of disclosure, see below, may be different depending on which method the person used to disclose.

Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF)

Once a person has notified us of their intention to make a disclosure, they then have 90 days to

  • gather the information needed to complete their disclosure,
  • calculate the final liabilities including tax, duty, interest and penalties,
  • complete their disclosure, using the unique disclosure reference number (DRN) we send when they first notify their intention to disclose.

If a person notified their intention to make a disclosure of offshore tax non-compliance via the WDF on or before 30 September 2018 they will not be liable to penalties for failing to correct provided they complete the disclosure process fully and accurately within the WDF’s 90-day time limit.

Contractual Disclosure Facility (CDF)

CDF has a 60-day timeframe for making an outline disclosure after a person has been accepted into the process. The person completes form CDF1 and sends it to HMRC. If HMRC accept the form, the person then has 60 days to make the outline disclosure.

In any case where a person made their request on or before 30 September 2018 and then submitted their outline disclosure within the 60-day time limit and continued to fully comply with the CDF process they will not be liable to penalties for the failure to correct any offshore tax non-compliance detailed in the outline disclosure.

During an enquiry

The person would have to inform the enquiring officer on or before 30 September that they wish to make a disclosure of offshore tax non-compliance. As there is an open enquiry, they will not be able to use WDF or CDF and will have to submit an outline disclosure to the enquiring officer by 29 November (60 days from the 30 September deadline).

The outline disclosure must provide details of

  • the offshore tax non-compliance they have committed,
  • the years involved,
  • a summary of how the non-compliance came about,
  • the amounts of tax that they believe they owe, and
  • a summary of the records that are available to help them make their disclosure.