Guidance

Make a voluntary disclosure to HMRC

Updated 29 August 2024

Introduction

HMRC believes that customers want to pay the correct amount of tax. If you think you have not paid us the correct amount of tax, we want to help you to put that right.

It does not matter why your tax affairs are wrong. It’s better to contact us and admit any failures or errors rather than wait until we contact you. Any penalties we charge on outstanding tax will usually be lower if you tell us about this yourself.

In serious cases of undisclosed tax or income, we may also consider starting a criminal investigation.

If you need help

If there’s anything about your health or personal circumstances that may make it difficult for you to deal with this matter, we may be able to offer you extra support. You can call us about this on the helplines listed in the ‘General Information’ section of this guidance. We’ll help in whatever way we can.

Ways to make a disclosure

There are several ways you can make a disclosure to us. You must make sure you understand the differences and select the one that’s correct for you.

1. The contractual disclosure facility

Use the contractual disclosure facility (CDF) if you want to make a disclosure because your deliberate behaviour has caused a loss to HMRC of any of the taxes, duties, levies or payments we administer.

Deliberate behaviour is when you knew you owed tax but chose not to tell us, or if you knew the figures on your tax return were wrong when you submitted it.

If you enter into the contractual disclosure facility contract and make a complete and accurate disclosure of all your deliberate behaviour which brought about the loss, we will not open a criminal investigation into your disclosure. The contractual disclosure facility is the only way to make a disclosure that gives this assurance.

2. Disclosing unpaid tax on cryptoassets

Use our service for disclosing unpaid tax on cryptoassets if your disclosure relates to income or gains from cryptoassets, including:

  • exchange tokens
  • non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
  • utility tokens

3. Disclosing misuse of your till system

Use our form for disclosing misuse of your till system if you’ve been using your till system to reduce your tax bill.

4. Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme grant repayments

Use our online service if you’re an employer who overclaimed Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme grants and want to pay us back.

5. The digital disclosure service

Use the digital disclosure service if you’re an individual or company and want to make a disclosure about:

  • Income Tax
  • Capital Gains Tax
  • Inheritance Tax
  • Corporation Tax
  • National Insurance contributions
  • Annual Tax for Enveloped Dwellings (ATED)

You cannot use the digital disclosure service for VAT related errors.

You can make a disclosure about errors you’ve made:

  • despite taking reasonable care to make sure you paid the right amount of tax
  • through carelessness
  • through deliberate actions

Examples include a business that has not declared all of its income, or a business that’s trading and has not registered with HMRC for one or more taxes.

If you qualify for a current HMRC campaign, you should follow their guidance.

If your disclosure involves income, assets or gains outside the UK, you should use the worldwide disclosure facility to make an offshore disclosure. This service is a part of the digital disclosure service.

You can make an offshore disclosure at the same time as an onshore disclosure.

How to make a disclosure using the digital disclosure service

If you’ve considered the different ways to disclose and you think that the digital disclosure service is the most appropriate, follow these steps to make your disclosure:

  1. Tell HMRC that you want to make a disclosure (notify).

  2. Tell us about all income, gains, tax and duties you’ve not told us about before (disclose).

  3. Make a formal offer.

  4. Pay what you owe.

  5. Help us as much as you can if we ask you for more information.

Notify

You must tell HMRC that you intend to make a disclosure. You need to do this as soon as you know that you owe tax.

At this stage, you only need to tell us that you’ll be making a disclosure. You do not need to give any details of the undisclosed income or the tax you believe you owe.

You can tell us about a disclosure you’ll be making:

  • about your own tax affairs or your company’s tax affairs (if you’re a director, or company secretary)
  • on behalf of someone else (for example, if you’re a tax adviser or personal representative)
  • about a trust or estate
  • about a limited liability partnership

You cannot include details for more than one person or company on a disclosure. For example, if a husband and wife have undisclosed income they must fill in separate disclosures, showing the share of the income they need to disclose. We need a separate notification for each person.

If we need a disclosure for a company and for a director, this should be on 2 separate disclosures.

Individuals and companies

Individuals and companies can use the digital disclosure service to notify.

We’ll write to you to tell you your unique disclosure reference number (DRN). Use this whenever you contact us about your disclosure.

You’ll also be given a payment reference number to use when paying what you owe.

Agents

You should use the digital disclosure service to notify us of your client’s disclosure. We’ll then send you a disclosure reference number and a payment reference number

Your client can use form COMP1a to allow us to deal directly with you about a disclosure made using the digital disclosure service.

If you’ve notified and realise you no longer need to make a disclosure you must tell us by calling the helpline. If you do not, we’ll take follow up action to secure a disclosure from you.

Disclose

You can do this as soon as you have your disclosure reference number. But you must disclose within 90 days of the date that we acknowledge your notification.

You can make a disclosure:

  • about your own tax affairs or your company’s tax affairs if you’re a director, or company secretary
  • on behalf of someone else
  • about a trust or estate
  • about a limited liability partnership

When you submit your disclosure you must pay what you owe using the payment reference number.

Make sure that we get your disclosure and payment within 90 days of the date we issue the notification acknowledgement. If you cannot pay what you owe by the deadline we give you, you must have made payment arrangements with us by that date.

You must do this before you submit your disclosure.

Prepare your disclosure

How to calculate what you owe

Depending on your circumstances this could be simple or complicated. You may want to get independent professional advice. Although you’ve 90 days from the date of the notification acknowledgement to make your disclosure, start gathering together your information and records as early as possible.

You’ll need to work out the additional liabilities for each year that’s wrong. You do not need to include any income in your disclosure that you’ve already declared. This is because tax should already have been paid on this income.

If you’ve already had PAYE income or told HMRC about some other income and you’re now disclosing additional income for any year, make sure that you take this into account in your calculations.

Once you’ve calculated the income you need to disclose, work out how much tax you owe on that income. The rates of Income Tax you’ll pay depend on how much income you earn above your Personal Allowance (the annual amount of tax-free income).

For those who make payments on account, you should consider these when making your calculation.

You may be able to use the penalties and interest calculator to help work out interest and penalties that are due on tax liability for up to the previous 20 years. You’ll need to calculate the tax liability due for each year manually prior to using this tool.

If you or your partner are getting tax credits, or you’ve recently made a claim, you should still make a disclosure but tick the appropriate box on your disclosure form. The information will be passed to the tax credits office to consider. You’ll be notified separately of any changes we may need to make to the amount of tax credits you get for the relevant years.

If you’ve made a joint claim for tax credits you should tell your partner that the award may be adjusted as a result of your disclosure.

Companies and other organisations (including clubs, societies, associations and other unincorporated bodies) need to determine the amount of Corporation Tax to disclose on the understated profit arising from this undeclared income.

The rate of Corporation Tax you’ll need to pay will depend on circumstances. You’ll have to consider notifying Companies House if you’ve submitted accounts that need amending.

If you do not have all the business records you need to make your disclosure

If your records are incomplete you should estimate the undisclosed income and gains and use this to make your disclosure. We may ask you to explain how you’ve worked out any estimates you’ve used, so keep your calculations.

You’ll need your bank statements for the period of your disclosure. If you do not have them, contact your bank as soon as possible to get copies. If you cannot get copy statements, work out your income by using more recent statements as a guide to your income and expenditure. We may ask you to explain why you could not get copy statements.

If you have not kept proper business records, you should start to immediately. If we find in the future that you’ve failed to keep appropriate records, we can penalise you up to £3,000.

Income to include in your disclosure

Include all of the income you’ve not told HMRC about before in your disclosure.

Income earned in either the current tax year or the year before the current tax year

Any income you’ve had in the current tax year should not be included in your disclosure. If you’re not registered for Self Assessment you’ll need to either:

We’ll send you a tax return or notice to file a tax return shortly after the end of the current tax year. Report this income on that tax return by the deadline. There are different deadlines for individuals and companies.

Include the income you had in the year before the current tax year on a tax return rather than in your disclosure. If you’ve submitted the previous year’s tax return you can make an amendment within 12 months of the statutory filing date.

Income Tax returns

Income Tax returns usually need to be submitted following the end of the tax year:

  • 31 October for paper returns
  • 31 January for online returns

So it’s likely that, for the current and prior year, you’ll still have time to submit an accurate tax return including this income.

You can make a disclosure for all tax years up to and including 2022 to 2023. But if we’ve sent you a tax return for that year or any year from 2020 to 2021 onwards that’s still outstanding, you must complete each return and do not include these tax years on this disclosure form.

Company Tax Returns

A Company Tax Return should be submitted within 12 months from the accounting period end date.

If your Company Tax Returns are outstanding, you should file all outstanding tax returns that are within 4 years from the end of the accounting period. Include income for earlier years in your disclosure.

How many years to include in your disclosure

The number of years that you need to disclose depends on your understanding of when you should have told HMRC about getting this income or gain.

If you’re making a voluntary disclosure, you’ll know why you have not told us about your income or paid the right amount of tax before. You must decide whether you made an error:

  • despite taking reasonable care
  • because you were careless
  • because it was something you did deliberately
  • where the lost tax involves an offshore matter or transfer which makes the loss of tax significantly harder for HMRC to identify

How much you pay will depend on the answers to those questions.

If you failed to notify HMRC that you’d started in business

If you’re an individual (including an individual within a partnership), the latest you should tell us that you started in business is 5 October in your business’s second tax year.

If, for example, you’ve tax to pay on income in the tax year ended 5 April 2024, you need to let HMRC know by 5 October 2024.

We send a newly formed limited company, a form CT41G (Corporation Tax — information for new companies) within a few days of the company registering with Companies House. This form is usually sent by post to your company’s registered office. If you do not get this form you must still tell us within 3 months of your company becoming active. For example, by starting business activity or starting to trade. The best way to do this is to use HMRC’s online service.

If you did not register for a Self Assessment tax return by the appropriate deadline you’ll have to pay us what you owe up to a maximum of 20 years.

If you’ve taken reasonable care

You’ll only have to pay us what you owe for a maximum of 4 years if you registered for a Self Assessment tax return by the appropriate deadline, and you:

  • took care to make sure your tax affairs were right
  • still did not pay enough

This means you must:

  • make sure that your tax affairs for the current and later tax years are accurately reported on tax returns by the appropriate deadlines
  • make sure that your tax affairs for the year before the current tax year are reported on the tax return that we issued to you for that year by the appropriate deadline
  • fill in the disclosure form and pay us what you owe for the 3 years before this

If you were careless

If you registered for a Self Assessment tax return by the appropriate deadline, but did not pay enough because you were careless, you must pay HMRC what you owe for a maximum of 6 years. This means you must:

  • make sure that your tax affairs for the current and later tax years are accurately reported on tax returns by the appropriate deadlines
  • make sure that your tax affairs for the year prior to the current tax year are reported on the tax return that was issued to you for that year by the appropriate deadline
  • fill in the disclosure form and pay us what you owe for the 5 years prior to this

If you deliberately misled HMRC about this income

If you’ve deliberately not paid enough tax you’ll have to pay us what you owe for a maximum of 20 years. Deliberately means that you knew you owed tax but chose not to tell us or that you knew the figures on your tax return were wrong when you submitted it.

If the lost tax involves an offshore matter or offshore transfer which make the loss of tax significantly harder for HMRC to identify

An offshore matter or offshore transfer can apply in the case of Income Tax (including PAYE), Capital Gains Tax or Inheritance Tax.

The number of years you need to disclose depends on your understanding of the income that resulted in the inaccuracy. Where the inaccuracy involved an offshore matter, you will have to pay us what you owe for a maximum of 12 years from the end of the relevant period.

The earliest year this applies to is the tax year 2015 to 2016 so you do not need to disclose any inaccuracies of this nature prior to this year where reasonable care has been taken.

Where the inaccuracy is due to careless behaviour the earliest year this applies to is the tax year 2013 to 2014.

Inheritance Tax

If you have not previously submitted an Inheritance Tax return and paid your tax, you must pay HMRC what you owe for the previous 20 years. It does not matter why you did not submit a return and pay the tax.

If you’ve deliberately not paid the Inheritance Tax you owe, no time limit applies. You must pay back all the Inheritance Tax you owe.

Other liabilities you should include in your disclosure

Other income liabilities including non-business income

You must include all income and gains in your disclosure where you’ve not paid enough tax. This may include:

  • investment income not taxed before you get it, for example, interest
  • taxed income where additional tax is owed
  • income from property or land rental, less the expenses relating to that income

But if your only undeclared income is from residential letting use the Let Property Campaign to disclose this.

Loans to directors: Corporation Tax Act 2010, Section 455

If you’re a company director and take money out of your company that’s not a salary or a dividend, over and above any money you’ve put in, you’re classed as having had the benefit of a director’s loan. If this applies, the company may have tax to pay.

When you pay off a director’s loan that your company has paid Corporation Tax on, your company may be able to reclaim that amount of Corporation Tax paid, you should call the relevant helpline (read General information).

Capital gains

You must disclose all capital gains that you’ve not declared before. For example, capital gains made on the disposal of investments, such as land, property, shares, stocks, bonds and goodwill.

A company will include its chargeable gains on its Company Tax Return.

Other potential liabilities you can tell us about in your disclosure

You cannot give details of the liabilities listed on your disclosure form, but tick the relevant box in the ‘Other potential liability’ section of the form and follow the guidance in the disclosure form. The campaigns team will talk to the relevant department to confirm you successfully resolved any issues with these liabilities.

Employer liabilities

If you employed anyone, you may have to pay some PAYE tax and National Insurance contributions on what you paid to your employees. You need to notify HMRC that you have employment liabilities to settle.

Send these disclosures to:

ISBC, Campaigns and Projects
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1QZ
United Kingdom

Employer liabilities for inbound foreign nationals on assignment to the UK

Employers disclosing inaccuracies for inbound foreign nationals on assignment to the UK should not use the digital disclosure service. Instead, you should email the full disclosure to: [email protected].

Alternatively you can post the full disclosure to:

Wealthy and Mid-sized Business Compliance
HM Revenue and Customs
S0733
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE98 1ZZ

VAT issues

If you want to make a disclosure of a VAT matter because you’ve exceeded the VAT threshold you can register for VAT online.

If you’ve made an error on a VAT Return you’ve submitted then you can put certain VAT errors right, subject to conditions, by adjusting your VAT Return.

If you do not meet the conditions for adjusting the return then you must make the adjustment in writing. You can notify any error in writing including those where you could make the adjustment on a VAT Return. Use form VAT 652 Notification of errors in VAT Returns.

You can include the details in a letter instead and post to:

BT VAT
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1WR
United Kingdom

Class 2 National Insurance contributions

If you are self-employed, you must register for Class 2 National Insurance contributions.

Use our tool to find out how to register for Self Assessment.

You can also find out more about National Insurance and what it is for.

If your profits from self-employment are low, you may not have to pay anything. But you can still choose to pay  voluntary Class 2 contributions.

Tax credits

If you or your partner are getting tax credits or made a claim, you should still make a disclosure but also tick the appropriate box on the disclosure form. The information will be passed to the tax credits office to consider. You’ll be notified separately of any changes that may be required to the amount of tax credits you get or have had for the relevant years.

Interest

We charge interest from the date tax is due until the date it’s paid. Interest is calculated on a daily basis. Any additional tax that’s included in your disclosure will be late and will attract an interest charge. If you do not include the right interest, we’ll reject your disclosure as it’ll be incomplete.

Individuals can use the penalties and interest calculator to help calculate the right amount of interest due. Only use this if your tax affairs are straightforward and you’re only entitled to basic personal allowances.

Companies can refer to HMRC interest rates to work out the amount of interest to pay.

Penalties

We charge penalties on any additional tax you owe if you:

  • sent us an incorrect tax return
  • did not tell us that you’re liable to tax

We do not charge interest on these penalties unless you pay them late.

In specific circumstances it may not be appropriate to allow you the full reductions for disclosure. For example, if you’ve taken a significant period to correct your non-compliance, you cannot expect us to agree a full reduction for disclosure.

In such cases it’s unlikely that we’ll reduce your penalty by more than 10 percentage points above the minimum of the statutory range. For this purpose we would normally consider a ‘significant period’ to be over 3 years, or less where the overall disclosure covers a longer period.

The factsheets on penalties for inaccuracies in returns and penalties for failure to notify have more information on the statutory range for penalties and how they can be reduced. If you think you might not be entitled to the full reduction, you should read these factsheets which provide more detail about calculating any reduction.

As you’re making a disclosure, it’s you (rather than a compliance officer), who must consider and calculate any penalties in the way the factsheets describe.

The penalty is a percentage of the additional amount you owe. We can charge penalties of up to:

  • 100% of the tax liability if the income or gain arose in the UK
  • 200% for an offshore liability

Penalties that apply to offshore income and gains depend on the category that the offshore territory falls into. This includes your disclosure.

Although the rate of the penalties will vary depending on your circumstances, they’ll usually be lower if you make a voluntary disclosure.

If you’ve taken reasonable care with your tax affairs, but you’ve not declared the right amount of tax you owe, you’ll not pay any penalties at all. We do not expect many people’s circumstances to fall within this category.

If you’ve not paid enough tax even though you’ve taken reasonable care with your affairs or there’s anything else you think we should consider concerning the penalties you have to pay, call the relevant helpline (read General information) before making your disclosure.

If we think that you’ve not included the right penalty in your disclosure, we may reject it.

Your rights when considering penalties

When you consider whether you need to pay a penalty in connection with your disclosure, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights gives you certain rights.

You have the right:

  • to seek help from a professional adviser
  • to have the matter of penalties dealt with without unreasonable delay
  • not to incriminate yourself

If you decide that a penalty is due as part of this disclosure opportunity, by making the disclosure about penalties, you’ll be giving up your right to silence under Article 6. This means we can use anything you decide to tell us when considering your liability to penalties.

The extent to which you co-operate with us and answer our questions about penalties will still be a matter for you to decide.

Other penalties

Depending on your circumstances, we may charge other penalties. These include late payment penalties arising because you failed to register at the right time or on tax paid late as a result of understating the tax due on your return.

Calculator

Individuals can use the HMRC calculator to help you calculate the interest and penalties due on the income you’re including in your disclosure.

If you’re making a multiple year disclosure, include all years in a single calculation, do not calculate each year on a separate basis.

Use the penalties and interest calculator if you need to include more years in your disclosure. This will help you to calculate the interest and penalties you owe for the last 20 years. This calculator is for interest and penalty calculations only and will not help you calculate the Income Tax due.

Companies can use the Corporation Tax rates and HMRC interest rates to work out the amount of tax and interest due. Calculate penalties using the tax amount understated and apply the appropriate penalty percentage shown in the factsheets on penalties for inaccuracies in returns and penalties for failure to notify.

To calculate the amount to be included in the disclosure follow these steps:

  1. Calculate additional Corporation Tax liability.

  2. Check the interest rates for late and early payments.

  3. Apply the right interest to liability calculated in step 1.

  4. Apply appropriate penalty to liability calculated in step 1.

When we check your disclosure we’ll consider whether the penalty you’ve applied is fair. There’s a space on the disclosure form where you can give an explanation to help us reach our decision. We may need to contact you to check the fairness of the penalty if you do not give an explanation.

If we think the penalty you’ve applied is too low we may carry out a further check of your tax affairs. For example, we may not accept that someone in business for many years, earning significant amounts without telling us, has not done this deliberately.

The declaration

This is a very important part of your disclosure. You should only fill in the declaration once you’re sure that the disclosure is right and complete, and that you understand why we’ve asked you to include penalties in your disclosure.

The offer

As part of your disclosure, you’ll make an offer to pay your outstanding liabilities. The offer, together with HMRC’s acceptance letter to you will create a legally binding contract between you and us. There’s a letter of offer at the end of your disclosure submission.

Pay HMRC

When to pay

When you pay, you’ll need a payment reference number. You’ll get one when you notify HMRC that you intend to make a disclosure.

Unless you’ve contacted us to agree additional time to pay, you should send your payment at the same time as you send your disclosure. We should receive it no later than the 90 day deadline given on your notification acknowledgement letter.

If you do not pay your outstanding liabilities, we’ll take steps to recover the money.

Payment methods

Use the payment reference number we’ve sent you to make a full payment of your outstanding liabilities. We accept payment by a range of methods but it’s best to make your payment electronically, it’s the most secure method.

If you cannot pay the full amount

We expect you to pay what you owe when you make your disclosure.

If you cannot pay the full amount, let us know as soon as possible and before you send in your disclosure by calling the helpline.

When you phone, we’ll want to talk to you about your current financial position so we can tell you what we think you should pay and when. To help us decide, you’ll need to tell us:

  • your disclosure reference number
  • how and when you intend to pay what you owe
  • what your current weekly or monthly income and outgoings are
  • what you own, including your home, other property or land, vehicles, investments, money in the bank
  • what you owe, including mortgages, loans and credit cards

If you cannot pay the full amount do not submit your disclosure or payment until you’ve spoken to us.

After we get your disclosure

Accepting your disclosure

We normally accept most disclosures. If, after checks, we’re satisfied that you’ve made a full disclosure, we’ll accept it as quickly as possible.

Acknowledging your disclosure

When we get your disclosure, we’ll send you an acknowledgement as soon as possible. If you’ve not had an acknowledgement within 2 weeks, call the relevant helpline (read General information).

We expect most disclosures to be self-explanatory but we may need to contact you or your tax adviser to clarify any points. We might also ask you to give evidence of your circumstances to satisfy us that your disclosure is complete. Your full co-operation is one of the conditions of using this opportunity. Failure to co-operate may result in us not accepting your offer.

Considering your disclosure

We will review all disclosures. If after those checks are done we decide to accept your disclosure, we’ll send you a letter accepting your offer. If we cannot accept the disclosure we’ll contact you.

If following our checks, we find that a disclosure is largely wrong we’ll seek much higher penalties. It’s also possible that in exceptional circumstances, an incomplete disclosure, we may consider it under the HMRC criminal investigation policy. In such cases we may use the material in the disclosure as evidence.

Disclosures that we’re unlikely to accept

HMRC will not accept disclosures that are found to be largely wrong or incomplete when we check them.

It’s also unlikely that we’ll accept disclosures from customers where we’ve opened an enquiry or compliance check before you’ve notified your intention to submit a disclosure under the campaign. Those who want to disclose liabilities under these circumstances should tell the HMRC person conducting the enquiry.

A full and early disclosure will influence the amount of penalty we seek in the ongoing enquiry or investigation.

We’ll not accept disclosures where we believe the money that’s the subject of the disclosure is the proceeds of serious organised crime. Examples of this include VAT fraud, VAT bogus registration fraud, organised tax credits fraud and instances where there’s wider criminality such as an ongoing police investigation.

An important factor for us when we decide if we’ll carry out civil or criminal investigations into cases of fiscal fraud, is whether the taxpayer has made a full and unprompted disclosure of any amounts evaded or improperly reclaimed. Whilst we’d consider each case on its merits, a full and unprompted disclosure would suggest that a civil, rather than criminal, investigation was appropriate.

If you leave something important out of your disclosure

If after submitting your disclosure you realise you’ve missed something out, you should immediately contact HMRC to make an amendment. You can do this by calling the helpline, or writing to:

ISBC, Campaigns and Projects
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1QZ

If we get information indicating that your disclosure was wrong, we’ve the right to look at your tax affairs again. We may write to you about the information we’ve got and if necessary, we’ll send you assessments to collect any extra tax due. These penalties are likely to be higher than those in your disclosure.

Information we get after we accept your disclosure

We will continue to get new information that may indicate someone has additional liabilities to tax. We’ll use this to identify customers where a disclosure could have been made or where the disclosure made is not what was expected based on the information we hold. If we discover that a customer has an additional liability, the time limits for using this information are determined by the person’s behaviour.

Publishing your details

In certain circumstances HMRC can publish the details of those penalised for deliberately failing in their tax obligations. If you come forward voluntarily you’ll earn the maximum reduction of any relevant penalties for the quality of disclosure, and we’ll not publish your details as long as you:

  • notify us that you’re going to make a disclosure
  • make a full disclosure including full payment of tax you owe which proves to be both accurate and complete before the deadline we give you
  • co-operate fully with us if we ask you for any further information

We may include you in a list of deliberate defaulters if you do not follow these steps.

Who’s liable for a company’s penalties

A company officer or officers may be liable to pay part, or all of a company’s penalty for a deliberate inaccuracy, failure to notify or wrongdoing, but only where the:

  • inaccuracy, failure or wrongdoing was attributable to the officer
  • officer gained or attempted to gain personally from the offence
  • company is, or is likely to become, insolvent

Getting things right for the future

Once you’ve submitted your disclosure, we expect you to keep your tax affairs in order in the future. This means that you should continue to accurately declare your income and gains for those years that fall after the latest year you include in your disclosure. You should make sure any tax returns that are issued to you are returned with accurate information by the appropriate deadlines.

General information

Help and advice

Call these helplines if you have any questions that have not been covered by this guide.

Disclosures with any offshore liabilities

Call the Offshore Disclosure Facility helpline if you have questions about disclosures that involve any offshore liabilities.

Disclosures of onshore liabilities where HMRC have contacted you

Call this helpline if you have received a letter from HMRC and have questions about disclosures involving onshore liabilities.

Telephone
0300 123 0998

Outside the UK
+44 300 123 0998

Opening times

Monday to Thursday, 9am to 5pm

Friday, 9am to 4:30pm

Closed weekends and bank holidays.

Disclosures of onshore liabilities where HMRC have not contacted you

Call this helpline if you have questions about making a voluntary onshore disclosure where HMRC have not contacted you.

Telephone
0300 123 1078

Outside the UK
+44 300 123 1078

Opening Times

Monday to Thursday, 9am to 5:00pm

Friday, 9am to 4:30pm

Voluntary let property disclosures

Call this helpline if you want to make a voluntary disclosure involving let property and have questions.

Telephone
0300 123 0998

Outside the UK
+44 300 123 0998

Opening times

Monday to Thursday, 9am to 5pm

Friday, 9am to 4:30pm

Closed weekends and bank holidays.

Voluntary disclosures from employers

Telephone
0300 322 9884

Outside the UK
+44 300 322 9884

Opening times

Monday to Thursday, 8:30am to 5pm

Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm

If you use Text Relay by Textphone, dial 18001 + number. If you use Text Relay by telephone dial 18002 + number.

To get help with any other issues or any other taxes or duties, contact the relevant HMRC helpline.

Find out about call charges.

You can also find out more about Self Assessment and Corporation Tax.

Make a disclosure for someone who’s died

If you want to make a disclosure for someone who’s died and you’re the personal representative or executor of the deceased, or their interests, you can do this through the digital disclosure service. Make sure it’s clear that you’re notifying on someone else’s behalf. We may ask for additional evidence that you’re authorised to act for them.

Customers with particular needs

If you need extra help, call our helplines. We can help if:

  • there’s anything about your health or personal circumstances that may make it difficult for you to deal with this or any forms or letters that we may send you
  • English is not your first language
  • you want a copy of this guidance in Welsh
  • you’d like us to use a certain format to communicate with you, for example, braille or Text Relay
  • you’d like a copy of this guidance in audio or large print

We recognise that these options might not meet the needs of some of our customers. You can contact us if you need extra support.

Your rights and obligations

HMRC’s customer charter explains what you can expect from us and what we expect from you.

If you’re unhappy with HMRC’s service

You can call the relevant helpline or write to us at:

ISBC, Campaigns and Projects
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1QZ

Privacy and confidentiality policy

The full protection of the Human Rights Act will continue to apply to you. HMRC has a strict policy regarding the privacy and confidentiality of customers’ personal information.

Data Protection Act

HMRC is a Data Controller under the Data Protection Act 1998. We hold information for the purposes specified in our notification to the Information Commissioner, including the assessment and collection of tax and duties, the payment of benefits and the prevention and detection of crime, and may use this information for any of them.

We may get information about you from others, or we may give information to them. If we do, it’ll only be as the law permits to:

  • check the accuracy of information
  • prevent or detect crime
  • protect public funds

We may check information we get about you with what’s already in our records. This can include information you gave, as well as information given to us by others, such as other government departments or agencies and overseas tax and customs authorities.

We’ll not give information to anyone outside HMRC unless the law permits us to do so.