The argument that actually moves a reluctant client is never the penalty arithmetic. When someone is deciding whether to come clean about four years of undeclared cash, the thing that lands is not "the penalty could be 70% of the tax". It is "your name, your trade and your address go on a page on GOV.UK that anybody can search, and it sits there for a year". I've watched people shrug at a five-figure penalty and go completely quiet when I describe that page. From 2 October, for a large part of my client base, that sentence stops being true.
TL;DR: SI 2026/1000 doubles HMRC's naming threshold from £25,000 to £50,000 on 2 October. I counted the current published list: 56 of the 149 names sit below the new line. The reputational lever I have leaned on for years disappears for most owner-managed clients, and what replaces it is the quality of the disclosure itself.
What actually changes on 2 October?
One number. The Finance Act 2009 (Publishing Details of Deliberate Tax Defaulters: Increase to Threshold) Order 2026 was made on 9 September, laid before Parliament on 11 September, and comes into force on 2 October (SI 2026/1000, 2026). Article 2 substitutes "£50,000" for "£25,000" in section 94(1)(b) of the Finance Act 2009, the provision setting how much tax a deliberate penalty must relate to before HMRC may publish your details.
That's the entire operative text. There is no transitional or saving provision, and HMRC has said the higher threshold applies from its November 2026 publication (HMRC, Changes to the publishing details of deliberate defaulters policy, 2026). The threshold has sat at £25,000 since the regime began on 1 April 2010, so this is the first movement in sixteen years.
Who actually drops off the list?
Fifty-six people and companies. I downloaded HMRC's current list, published 25 June 2026, and counted it rather than trusting the summaries: 149 entries, of which 56 show tax of £50,000 or less (HMRC, Details of deliberate tax defaulters, June 2026). That is 37.6% of the list, not publishable under the new threshold.
Who they are matters more than the count. In the sub-£50,000 band, 64% are named individuals rather than companies. Above £50,000 it inverts, and 68% are companies. Construction trades account for 43% of the lower band against 15% of the upper one. At the bottom of the list sits a plumber at £25,511.73 of tax, a general builder at £25,576, a bricklayer at £26,037, a scaffolder at £28,137. At the top is Newcastle United Football Company Limited at £1,922,960.60.
The band being removed carries £2.03m of tax against £24.04m across the whole list. So HMRC drops 37.6% of the names to protect 8.4% of the revenue at stake. The list stops naming tradespeople and carries on naming companies.
Why did the naming argument work in the first place?
Because publication is a sanction that does not scale with the ability to pay. A £40,000 penalty is survivable for most trading businesses, and it can be time-to-paid. A supplier, a lender or a prospective customer finding your name on a government page is not something you can settle in instalments.
For a sole trader whose work arrives by word of mouth in one town, twelve months of searchable public record is a heavier sanction than the tax. That asymmetry is why the regime bit hardest on small businesses, and they are precisely the group this change removes.
Worth being clear that none of this touches who gets penalised. The naming regime only ever engaged at the deliberate end of the behaviour scale, and I have written before about where HMRC draws the line between careless, reckless and criminal. That line has not moved, and neither has the fact that most of the £59bn tax gap is not fraud at all.
The argument that replaces it
Full disclosure, which was always the stronger argument. Section 94(10) blocks publication outright where the penalty is reduced for disclosure "to the full extent permitted" (Finance Act 2009 s94). Earn the maximum reduction and there is no qualifying penalty to publish, at any threshold, in any year.
One point commentary regularly gets wrong. For a domestic deliberate inaccuracy under Schedule 24, the disclosure does not have to be unprompted. A prompted disclosure works, provided the reduction reaches the maximum. For a deliberate but not concealed inaccuracy the prompted range runs from 70% of the tax down to 35% (HMRC CH82470). Get to 35% and the naming question closes. Only the offshore provisions require the full reduction to follow an unprompted disclosure.
So the conversation changes shape rather than losing its point. It stops being "disclose or you will be named" and becomes "disclose completely, early, and answer everything, because that is what earns the maximum reduction". The second version is harder to sell in a first meeting and it is better advice. If you have a disclosure in progress, test it against that standard before the penalty is agreed, not after.
Does the date a penalty becomes final matter more now?
For live cases sitting between £25,000 and £50,000, it matters a great deal. Section 94(7) prevents HMRC publishing anything before the day the penalty becomes final, section 94(8) gives HMRC one year from that day to publish for the first time, and section 94(9) caps the publication itself at one year from first appearing. A penalty becomes final the day after the appeal window closes where no appeal is made, the date an appeal is finally determined, or the date of a contract settlement (HMRC CH191010).
I'd rather practitioners understood that sequence than tried to work it. Potential lost revenue is a question of fact, not a figure you negotiate toward £49,999. A hard cliff on a reputational sanction will produce bunching just below the line, the same behaviour you see under the VAT registration threshold, and that is the predictable cost of rationing a non-monetary penalty with a round number. Pushing a client's numbers to fit under a cliff edge is how you end up on the wrong side of the sanctionable conduct rules that went live in April.
The part of this package that gets worse
The threshold was the one piece of the July 2026 reform that could be done by secondary legislation. The rest is in Finance Bill 2026-27, and it runs the other way. HMRC proposes a new section 94A allowing it to publish details of company officers who receive personal liability notices, plus more detail about the non-compliance itself, including a description and the tax and penalty types charged. Those provisions apply to deliberate non-compliance occurring after Royal Assent.
For an owner-managed company that is a worse position. Today the company gets named and the director stands behind it. Under section 94A the director can be named personally, and a personal liability notice follows the individual rather than dying with the company. Fewer names, more exposure for the ones that remain. It runs alongside HMRC's push to see every payment to directors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will HMRC remove my details from the list now the threshold is £50,000?
Do not count on it. HMRC has said the new threshold applies from its November 2026 publication, which points to the next refresh being the first drawn under the higher line, not a mid-cycle cull of existing entries. In any event section 94(9) already caps publication at one year from the date details first appeared, so entries drop off on that clock regardless.
What stops HMRC publishing my details if I have been charged a deliberate penalty?
Earning the maximum penalty reduction for the quality of your disclosure. Under section 94(10) a penalty reduced to the full extent permitted is not publishable, so the details cannot go up at all. For a deliberate but not concealed inaccuracy disclosed after HMRC made contact, that means getting the penalty down to 35% of the tax, which requires telling, helping and giving access without holding anything back.
When does a tax penalty become final, and why does that date matter?
It becomes final the day after the appeal period ends if no appeal is made, on the date an appeal is finally determined, or on the date a contract settlement is made. It matters because HMRC cannot publish before that day, and loses the power to publish for the first time once twelve months have run from it. A late appeal accepted by HMRC or the tribunal pushes finality back until that appeal is determined.
Does the higher threshold make smaller cases less risky?
No, and treating it that way would be a mistake. The penalty rates are unchanged, the behaviour test is unchanged, and HMRC's ability to find the income keeps improving, as anyone following the card takings data-matching programme will know. What has changed is one consequence at the end of the process, not the likelihood of getting there.
If you are weighing up a disclosure, for a client or for yourself, and the numbers land anywhere near the new line, get in touch. I am happy to talk through what a full disclosure would need to cover and where the penalty range realistically ends up.