The Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF) is worth its weight in gold for those still sheltering their offshore assets from HMRC. It can be entered into voluntarily or following receipt of a letter from HMRC.

Those UK residents having overseas assets can be the wealthier in society, but not always so and HMRC are likely to recover far more for the Crown from such assets.

HMRC receive masses of information on overseas bank accounts and property now as a result of the automatic exchange of information and are well ahead of the game.

You may receive a letter inviting you to join the WDF and if you do, you should take it that HMRC already know the majority of what you own abroad, and you may well be deemed to have acted deliberately in under-declaring your UK tax liabilities.

The WDF allows individuals to disclose any income and tax due on earnings both inside and outside of the UK. This includes income from a country outside the UK,
assets held outside of the UK and business activities that may have taken place outside the UK.

You can also apply for the WDF and make a voluntary unprompted disclosure prior to any HMRC Intervention letter.

This enables you to obtain a clean sheet going forward with no fear that one day a brown envelope will land on your mat and as it is unprompted you will benefit from a lower penalty level.

However HMRC, often write to you indicating that they are aware of your offshore assets, offering you the opportunity to join the WDF and make your own disclosure. In accepting the offer the ball is in your court to draft the necessary accounts or figures to back up the online disclosure and the advice of a specialist is recommended. All disclosures have to be made through HMRC’s online Digital Disclosure Service portal. This involves you having to calculate not only the tax due but the interest going back to day one and selecting the correct penalty level applicable.

In these circumstances this will not be classed as ‘unprompted’, penalties will be slightly higher, but is still the best streamlined and convenient way of disclosing everything to HMRC without HMRC’s actual intervention in the process.

Once the disclosure is sent to them, they will then check it against information held, liaise with Lindsay if necessary to reach agreement.

Lindsay is very experienced in preparing and submitting such WDF online disclosures and has great success in liaising with HMRC in advance of that to discover what HMRC are sitting on at their end, in order to make sure that the disclosure is complete and correct.

One good element of this form of disclosure is that it also offers people the opportunity to disclose any other irregularities or understatements of tax arising even if it is within the UK.

Provided you have an offshore matter that you need to declare, you can carry on and notify HMRC of any errors relating to your UK tax position from onshore tax evasion. This gives you an opportunity to walk away with a clean sheet with the minimal intervention of HMRC.

There are circumstances where you will have already paid tax in the offshore jurisdiction for example in the South of Ireland, which has a similar tax regime to ours, or in other EU countries where you may already have suffered for example capital gains tax, already.

Double taxation agreements exist for you to have a credit here for offshore tax paid in most circumstances. Again, expert advice is needed but this may well clear or minimise your tax liabilities when the big picture is finally brought together.

Let’s get together and register for the HMRC disclosure facility now and start the ball rolling to minimise the settlement due from day one, call 07879 464 577