Answers · UK 2025/26

What is the Worldwide Disclosure Facility, and who should use it?

The Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF) is HMRC's online route for voluntarily correcting undeclared UK tax liabilities relating to offshore income, gains or assets — such as foreign bank interest, overseas rental property, or offshore investments — before HMRC discovers the issue itself through international data-sharing agreements. Using it typically results in lower penalties than if HMRC identifies the same offshore income independently.

Last updated: 4 July 2026Last reviewed: 4 July 2026How we verify

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The Worldwide Disclosure Facility is a dedicated online HMRC service specifically for taxpayers to voluntarily disclose and correct previously undeclared UK tax liabilities connected to offshore matters — this includes interest from foreign bank or savings accounts, rental income from overseas property, gains from selling overseas assets, income or gains from offshore trusts or investment structures, and any other UK tax liability where the underlying income or gain arose outside the UK. It exists partly because HMRC now receives vast amounts of offshore financial account information automatically from over 100 other countries under the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), a global agreement for the automatic exchange of financial account information between tax authorities, meaning HMRC is increasingly likely to already hold, or soon receive, data revealing offshore income or assets that have not been correctly declared on a UK Self Assessment return, even years after the event. Using the WDF to disclose proactively — rather than waiting for HMRC to raise the issue itself following a data-match, such as a nudge letter — generally results in a considerably more favourable penalty outcome, since HMRC's penalty regime for offshore matters specifically rewards unprompted disclosure with lower penalty percentages than a prompted disclosure (made only after being approached by HMRC) or a penalty imposed following a formal HMRC-led investigation, and the geographic location of the offshore matter can further increase the maximum penalty percentage under specific offshore penalty rules layered on top of the standard behaviour-based penalty regime. The disclosure process involves registering your intention to disclose via the WDF online service, then within a set period submitting full details of the previously undeclared income or gains, the tax years involved, and calculating the additional tax, interest and any applicable penalty due, which HMRC then reviews and confirms (or queries) before the matter is formally settled. Given the complexity of calculating historic tax liabilities correctly, the interaction with the extended time limits that can apply to offshore matters specifically (which can, in some circumstances, extend even beyond the standard 20-year limit for deliberate behaviour), and the significant sums that can be involved, most taxpayers using the WDF engage a specialist tax adviser or accountant to manage the disclosure process rather than attempting it entirely unaided.