HMRC has made the Anti-avoidance Information Notices (Resolution of Disputes as to Privilege) Regulations 2026, a procedural instrument that explains how disagreements over privileged material are to be handled when an anti-avoidance information notice is issued under the Finance Act 2026. The Regulations were made on 27 May 2026, laid before the House of Commons on 29 May 2026 and come into force on 19 June 2026. According to the statutory instrument, the change is specific but significant. It does not create the anti-avoidance notice power itself. Instead, it sets the formal route for resolving a dispute where HMRC says information must be produced and the recipient says the material is protected by privilege.
The legal basis for the instrument is section 186(5) of the Finance Act 2026. The Regulations sit within the wider anti-avoidance information notice regime in sections 179 to 183 of that Act, and the accompanying legislative text makes clear that information is defined broadly. It includes documents, parts of documents and anything in which information of any kind is recorded. That broad drafting matters in practice. A dispute may concern a full file, but it may also relate to a single passage in a document, an attachment, an email chain or another recorded item that a recipient says should not be disclosed because of privilege.
The Regulations define privileged information by reference to section 186(2)(d) of the Finance Act 2026 rather than repeating the full test. In plain English, the procedure is engaged where the contested material falls within the Act's exception for privilege. They also define a working day as any day other than a Saturday, Sunday or a bank holiday in any part of the United Kingdom. That point is easy to miss, but it will affect deadline calculations where a notice falls around a holiday period and advisers are counting the 20-working-day periods set by the instrument.
Where a dispute arises, the first formal step falls on the recipient of the information notice, or a person acting on the recipient's behalf. The recipient must serve a list on HMRC identifying the information that is in dispute and giving a description of the information and its contents. The Regulations include an important safeguard at that stage. If the recipient considers that even describing the material would itself disclose privileged information, no description is required. For legal representatives and tax advisers, that avoids the obvious problem of having to reveal the substance of material while arguing that it should remain protected.
The list must be served by the date for providing information set out in the information notice, unless HMRC agrees a later date. Any extension agreed by HMRC must still fall within 20 working days beginning with the day after the original compliance date. HMRC must then notify the recipient of any information on the list that it considers is not privileged information. The procedure is therefore designed to narrow the dispute before it reaches the tribunal, rather than treating the whole notice as unresolved.
If information remains in dispute after HMRC has given its notification, the recipient must apply to the tribunal within 20 working days beginning with the day after that notification. The application must include copies of the information that remains in dispute so that the tribunal can determine whether, and to what extent, the material is privileged. A central protection appears in regulation 3(8). Where the procedural requirements have been met, the recipient is treated as having complied with the information notice in relation to the disputed material until the tribunal has decided the issue or the parties have reached a written agreement. For businesses, professional firms and advisers, that means the contested material is not treated as outstanding non-compliance while the privilege question is still being resolved.
Regulation 4 gives the tribunal a tightly defined task. It may confirm whether, and to what extent, the information in dispute is or is not privileged information. Regulation 5 adds a separate route, allowing HMRC and the recipient to resolve the dispute at any time through a written agreement. The explanatory note states that the instrument provides the procedure for resolving privilege disputes arising from anti-avoidance information notices, and HMRC also says the Tax Information and Impact Note published on 26 November 2025 remains an accurate summary of the instrument's effects. The practical message is straightforward. From 19 June 2026, any recipient of one of these notices will need a clear internal process for identifying potentially privileged material, meeting the statutory deadlines and deciding quickly whether a tribunal application is necessary.