HM Treasury has raised the monetary threshold used in the deliberate tax defaulter publication regime, doubling it from £25,000 to £50,000. The change is set out in the Finance Act 2009 (Publishing Details of Deliberate Tax Defaulters: Increase to Threshold) Order 2026, which was made on 9 September 2026 and laid before the House of Commons on 11 September 2026. According to the instrument published on legislation.gov.uk, the Order comes into force on 2 October 2026. From that date, the section 94 test in the Finance Act 2009 will apply only where the tax lost exceeds £50,000 rather than £25,000.
The amendment itself is narrow but significant. Article 2 simply substitutes £50,000 for £25,000 in section 94(1)(b) of the Finance Act 2009, leaving the rest of the statutory scheme intact. In practice, that means the Treasury has changed the value threshold for one of HMRC’s public naming powers. The Order does not introduce a new compliance rule or a new penalty; it resets the monetary condition for publication under an existing regime.
Section 94 of the Finance Act 2009 allows HM Revenue and Customs to publish information, including names, about persons who have been penalised for deliberate defaults where the tax lost exceeds the statutory threshold. The explanatory note attached to the Order confirms that the previous figure was £25,000. Read plainly, the legal effect is that cases involving tax lost above £25,000 but not above £50,000 will no longer satisfy that monetary test once the Order starts. A penalty for deliberate default can still arise, but the case will sit outside this particular publication threshold.
For HMRC, the immediate result is a narrower group of cases that can be publicised under the deliberate defaulter rules. Raising the threshold does not remove the naming regime, but it reserves publication for higher-value cases under section 94. For taxpayers, advisers and compliance teams, the change matters mainly at the reputational end of enforcement. The duty to report accurately and pay the correct tax is unchanged, yet the point at which a deliberate default may be exposed through this statutory naming power is now higher.
The legislative route is clear on the face of the instrument. The Treasury made the Order under section 94(12) of the Finance Act 2009, and it is signed by Christian Wakeford and Shaun Davies as two of the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury. The explanatory note also records that section 94 was previously amended by section 164 of the Finance Act 2016. That background does not alter the present measure, but it places the 2026 Order within a longer pattern of adjustments to the disclosure regime.
The government has issued supporting material alongside the legislation. The note states that a Tax Information and Impact Note was published on gov.uk on 13 July 2026 and remains an accurate summary of the effects of the instrument. Taken together, the Order and the accompanying government explanation present this as a targeted recalibration of the Finance Act 2009 publication rules. The policy change is limited to the threshold amount, but its practical effect is clear: from 2 October 2026, fewer deliberate default cases will meet the value condition for public naming by HMRC under section 94.