Legal definition of dishonesty and conspiracy to commit ‘tax evasion’

In ‘Cautionary tale’ (Taxation 7 April 2022 page 23) the magazine’s esteemed editor-in-chief Andrew Hubbard (to whom with his permission we will refer as Andrew through the remainder of this article) disclosed how he narrowly avoided entering into a cross-border conspiracy to commit tax evasion via bass recorder – the woodwind instrument not the electronic device for digitally recording bass guitar (tinyurl.com/VATtrap).

In documenting the harrowing journey Andrew raised a number of interesting questions: would he have been complicit in a criminal offence if the seller had taken unilateral action to commit tax evasion on Andrew’s behalf? What if any actions would he have to take vis-à-vis Her Majesty’s government in the form of Andrew’s local postman (ignoring for the purposes of narrative convenience that the Royal Mail was privatised in 2015) ...