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The Criminal Finances Act 2017 (CFA 2017) received royal assent on 27 April 2017. It includes a corporate offence of failure to prevent facilitation of tax evasion, which came into force on 30 September 2017.

The government has issued guidance which sets out its expectations on compliance systems, which is incorporated into tax evasion facilitation (compliance) content.

The government guidance should be considered and applied in a risk-based and proportionate way. This includes taking account of the size, nature and complexity of your organisation. A small organisation and a large multinational organisation may implement the principles in very different ways: what is reasonable for a small business in a low-risk sector may be entirely unreasonable for a large business in a high-risk sector.

The government recognises that any regime which is risk-based and proportionate cannot be a zero failure regime. If you can demonstrate you have put in place reasonable prevention procedures that identify and mitigate your tax evasion facilitation risks, prosecution is unlikely as you will be able to raise a statutory defence.

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