Offshore Disclosure Accepted — No Penalty, No Reputational Damage
A UK resident with inherited overseas assets received a letter from HMRC threatening penalties for non-disclosure. We acted swiftly and convinced HMRC they could not assess certain tax years, saving significant tax.
Our client inherited overseas investments from a relative abroad. Unaware of UK tax reporting obligations, they omitted the foreign income from their Self-Assessment tax returns.
Years later, HMRC issued a “nudge” letter citing potential offshore non-compliance and warning of penalties up to 200%.
We immediately:
Reconstructed the full timeline of inheritance, income, and tax filings.
Submitted a disclosure under HMRC’s Worldwide Disclosure Facility.
Argued successfully that HMRC could not assess certain tax years due to statutory limitations, reducing the client’s tax exposure significantly.
Demonstrated that the error was non-deliberate and mitigated by the client’s prompt cooperation.
HMRC accepted the disclosure in full, issued no penalty and agreed to exclude assessments for earlier tax years saving the client over £130k in tax.
“I felt completely overwhelmed when the HMRC letter arrived. Signant Tax handled everything and helped me mitigate penalties and tax.”
— Private Client, Cheshire
Signant Tax Insight: Offshore errors often come from misunderstanding, not misconduct. How you explain that and when can define the outcome.