The Criminal Finances Act 2017 included two tax evasion offences:  

• The corporate failure to prevent the facilitation of UK tax evasion  
• The corporate failure to prevent the facilitation of foreign tax evasion

In essence, firms can be criminally liable for failing to prevent tax evasion, even if the business was not involved or aware of the tax evasion activities. It is safe to say HMRC has moved on from simply targeting individuals and entities who could be evading taxes and is now also pursuing firms, where someone acting for the firm, assists a third party in evading tax.  

Firms need to be on the lookout for tax evasion by third parties and have procedures in place to ensure that it’s appropriately reported.

This workshop will enable you to:

• Differentiate between Tax evasion and Tax avoidance as well as identify where aggressive tax avoidance schemes might cross the line.
• Define how the CFA 2017 affects your firm and your clients.
• Examine real-life cases of facilitation and how they could have been prevented.
• Isolate and identify third party risks and issues arising from this.

Workshop overview:

• Provide clarity on what is meant by facilitation of tax evasion
• Confirm the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion 
• Consider the impact of the CFA 2017 requirements, and its six guiding principles, on firms
• Discuss what would be considered reasonable procedures to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion 
• Highlight the red flags and consider the risk using case studies

Take this training in-house:

This workshop is also available as an in-house programme, which means you can tailor it to exactly what you and your colleagues require. Pricing for in-house will depend on what is required. Enquire about this option by contacting our training team.