Staff tax evasion must be reported

UK and foreign companies will become criminally liable for failing to stop their staff facilitating tax evasion if new government proposals are adopted. ‘The criminal law currently renders corporations that refrain from implementing good corporate governance and strong reporting procedures hard to prosecute, and offers no incentive to invest in such procedures,’ the government said in a consultation paper. The new legislation would criminalise the ‘failure to prevent’ the facilitation of evasion for the first time and will place obligations on corporates to monitor their employees, agents and subsidiaries. 30.5.16