Number of live Corporate Criminal Offences investigations
Updated 5 February 2024
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1. Background
At the March 2015 Budget the government announced that it would make it a crime for corporations to fail to put in place reasonable procedures to prevent associated persons from criminally facilitating tax evasion. The intention being that relevant bodies should be criminally liable where they fail to prevent those who act for, or on their behalf from, criminally facilitating tax evasion.
The Corporate Criminal Offences (CCO) for the failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion were introduced by Part 3 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
2. Information released
With potentially unlimited fines for organisations found guilty of the offences, organisations must take their responsibilities seriously and put in place reasonable procedures to stop the facilitation of tax evasion. This is not about simply increasing the number of corporate prosecutions but changing industry practice and attitudes towards risk, encouraging organisations to do more to prevent tax crime happening in the first place. HMRC does not have a numerical target for these offences but will prioritise risks and sectors that will have the most impact on changing behaviour.
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 on. HMRC has 35 potential CCO cases underway, see below for further details. Results will be made public as and when it is appropriate to do so.
As at 1 January 2024:
- HMRC currently has 11 live CCO investigations - no charging decisions have yet been made
- a further 24 live opportunities are currently under review - to date we have reviewed and rejected an additional 94 opportunities
- these investigations and opportunities span 10 different business sectors and sit across all HMRC customer groups - sectors include software providers, labour provision, accountancy and legal services and transport
- we’ve always been clear that these numbers will go up and down as part of the normal criminal investigation process - not every opportunity will lead to an investigation and not every investigation will lead to a charge
- in some cases, following investigation we have been satisfied with explanations provided and have not established deliberate facilitation - but those investigations have found other tax and regulatory offences that are being pursued
- as we’ve always said, investigations are not the sole measure of success – the legislation was introduced to drive behavioural change and for organisations to put in place preventative procedures that reduced the opportunity for facilitation to occur in the first instance
3. Further information
HMRC intends to update this information biannually with a similar Freedom of Information release. Taxpayer confidentiality will prevent HMRC from providing additional detail on those subject to CCO investigations.
You can read government guidance Tackling tax evasion: Government guidance for the corporate offences of failure to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion for more detailed information about the legislation.
If you believe your organisation may have committed these offences you can tell us about it through the corporate self reporting portal.