The UK tax authority’s (HM Revenue & Customs) campaign against tax evasion will be bolstered, from autumn 2017, by a new corporate criminal offence of failing to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion.

The offence appears in Part 3 of the Criminal Finances Bill which was introduced into Parliament in October 2016

Under the new offence, an organisation will be criminally liable where;

1. a tax evasion offence is committed by a taxpayer and
2. a related facilitation offence is committed by a person associated with the organisation, subject to a statutory defence of having in place reasonable procedures to prevent facilitation by its associated persons.

This Freshfields briefing summarises the scope of the new offence and action organisations should be taking in advance of the offence coming into force in 2017.

The briefing is available: http://bit.ly/2i5CP9z