The Treasury has made the Finance Act 2009 (Publishing Details of Deliberate Tax Defaulters: Increase to Threshold) Order 2026, according to the text published on legislation.gov.uk. The instrument was made on 9 September 2026, laid before the House of Commons on 11 September 2026, and comes into force on 2 October 2026. Its single operative change is narrow but material. Using the power in section 94(12) of the Finance Act 2009, article 2 substitutes "£50,000" for "£25,000" in section 94(1)(b), raising the tax-loss threshold linked to HMRC's power to publish details of deliberate tax defaulters.
Section 94 of the Finance Act 2009 allows HM Revenue and Customs to publish information, including names, where a person has been penalised for a deliberate default and the amount of tax lost exceeds the statutory threshold. The Order does not recast that publication regime. It changes only the monetary trigger that must be met before the publication power can be used under section 94(1)(b). That distinction is important for practitioners. The instrument does not alter the definition of a deliberate default, the wider penalty structure, or HMRC's investigative powers. On the face of the legislation, it is a targeted amendment to one figure in the primary Act.
From 2 October 2026, the practical test becomes stricter. Where the tax lost from a deliberate default exceeds £50,000, HMRC may still move to publish the person's details under the Finance Act 2009 framework. Where the tax lost is more than £25,000 but not more than £50,000, that case will no longer satisfy the threshold in section 94(1)(b) as amended by this Order. For affected taxpayers, the change narrows the set of cases that can lead to this form of public disclosure. The reputational consequence attached to deliberate default cases will therefore be reserved for higher-value matters than under the previous threshold.
The group most directly affected is made up of individuals and businesses that have incurred penalties for deliberate tax defaults, together with tax agents, in-house finance teams and compliance advisers managing disclosure risk. For those parties, the Order changes the publication threshold rather than the underlying duty to comply with tax law. In operational terms, the amendment is most relevant when assessing exposure after a deliberate default has already been established and the amount of tax lost has been quantified. It gives advisers a clearer statutory line: publication under this regime now depends on a figure above £50,000, not above £25,000.
The explanatory note published with the instrument states that article 2 increases the threshold and that a Tax Information and Impact Note was issued on 13 July 2026. That note, published on gov.uk, is said to remain an accurate summary of the effects applying to the instrument. The legislation text does not set out any further policy redesign within the Order itself. There is no broader restructuring of HMRC's deliberate defaulters regime in this instrument, and no additional amendments are made to section 94 beyond the revised amount.
The Order was signed on behalf of the Treasury by Christian Wakeford and Shaun Davies, two of the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, on 9 September 2026. The legislation.gov.uk record also notes that section 94 of the Finance Act 2009 had previously been amended by section 164 of the Finance Act 2016. For practitioners, the immediate compliance point is timing. The £25,000 threshold remains the statutory figure up to 1 October 2026, and the new £50,000 threshold applies from 2 October 2026. Any assessment of HMRC's ability to publish details under this regime will therefore need to be checked against the commencement date set out in the Order.