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As at 13 May 2022, HMRC had seven live investigations into corporate criminal offences of the failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion, HMRC has revealed in a freedom of information release.
There are a further 21 live ‘opportunities’ under review and HMRC has so far rejected another 69. The release notes that the investigations and potential investigations span 11 different business sectors and ‘sit across all HMRC customer groups’, including accountancy and legal services.
HMRC also states that investigations ‘are not the sole measure of success’ with the aim of the legislation being to change behaviours and encourage organisations to put preventative procedures in place to reduce the opportunity for facilitation in the first place.
The new offences came into effect on 30 September 2017 and are applicable to organisations that failed to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion from that date.
