CH178300 - Sanctionable conduct by tax advisers: penalty for sanctionable conduct: disclosure: telling
Telling includes
- admitting the conduct
- disclosing the extent of the conduct
- explaining how and why the conduct occurred, and
- disclosing the existence of any relevant documents.
There are no restrictions on how a tax adviser can make a disclosure – it could be by phone, in person, by letter or by email.
What is important is the timing, nature and extent of the telling.
As to timing, this reflects how long it takes for the tax adviser to complete the telling, especially once they have been prompted.
The nature of the telling covers why the sanctionable conduct occurred. The tax adviser needs to tell us about all the circumstances and everything they know about what led to their sanctionable conduct and not just react passively to our questions. Answering all our questions fully may, however, be sufficient to tell us everything we need to know about their sanctionable conduct, or all the person is capable of, after taking into account their abilities and circumstances. One particular circumstance to bear in mind in this regard is whether the adviser is bound by a contractual duty of confidentiality to their client. Such a duty may prevent them from going beyond simply responding to the questions and requests we put to them.
The extent of the telling is whether everything is disclosed to us. If the tax adviser makes only a partial disclosure, then this will be reflected in the quality of disclosure and amount of penalty assessed. However, again bear in mind that a tax adviser may be bound by contractual and professional duties of confidentiality to their client which may prevent them from making disclosures of information we have not explicitly requested.
There is an overlap here with ‘helping’, see CH178310. A disclosure that makes no reference to the scale of the sanctionable conduct is not a complete disclosure.