ECSH82825 - Sanctions for non-compliance: financial penalties: financial penalties framework: behaviours - definition of an unprompted and prompted disclosure

A disclosure is unprompted if it is made at a time when the person making it has no reason to believe that we have discovered or are about to discover the failure. Otherwise, it is a prompted disclosure.

If the disclosure was as a result of any contact with any HMRC officer (not just an Economic Crime Supervision officer) then this is a prompted disclosure.

To encourage unprompted disclosures there is a reduction applied to the penalty of 50% and the framework is publicly available.

A disclosure will be treated as unprompted even if at the time it is made the full extent of the disclosure is not known, as long as the full details are provided within a reasonable time.

A disclosure will either be prompted or unprompted and will be dependent on the specific facts in each case.

All the facts need to be considered before deciding if a disclosure is unprompted or prompted. You should apply a common-sense approach in deciding whether or not a disclosure is unprompted.