Tell HMRC your organisation failed to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion
Self-report a company or partnership that did not prevent the facilitation of tax evasion if you’re their authorised representative.
Overview
Use this report to tell HMRC on behalf of a company or partnership that they have failed to prevent a representative from criminally facilitating UK tax evasion, and that they may be guilty of a corporate failure to prevent offence under Part 3 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
You should consider seeking professional legal advice, and read all of this guidance before you submit your report.
You can give basic details about the organisation’s prevention procedures to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion in your report, but cannot include their full prevention procedures. We may contact you after you have submitted the report if we need this information.
For the facilitation of tax evasion to be a criminal act, a person must have deliberately and dishonestly helped another person to evade tax. This does not include the accidental, ignorant or negligent facilitation of tax evasion.
Criminal facilitation is defined in Section 44(4) in Part 3 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
When to use this report
You must:
- have authority from the company or partnership to report on their behalf
- only use this form to report an organisation’s failure to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion
You will need to give details about the criminal facilitation that the company or partnership failed to prevent, and any tax evasion that may have taken place as a result.
Self-reporting is voluntary. You and the company or partnership you’re acting on behalf of have a right to remain silent. You can give as much information in your report as you want.
You may commit a criminal offence if you give false information, or include information that you do not honestly believe to be true.
Only give the information that you already have. For your own safety, do not try to find out more information so you can self-report.
You must not:
- encourage anyone to commit a crime or continue committing a crime to get more information
- continue committing a crime yourself to get more information
Once you have been authorised to send a self-report on behalf of a company or partnership, we recommend you:
- do not tell other people that you’re sending a report
- tell us if you’ve included information that has been given to you by someone else
The person who sends the report will not be guilty of failing to prevent the facilitation (despite the fact they are self-reporting on behalf of the company or partnership).
When not to use this report
Do not use the report to:
- tell us about the wrongdoing of a company or partnership if you are not authorised to do so
- report on the behaviour of other companies or partnerships - contact the HMRC Fraud Hotline instead
- report foreign tax offences - contact the Serious Fraud Office instead
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)
SARs alert law enforcement that certain client or customer activity is in some way suspicious, and might indicate money laundering or terrorist financing.
This form is not a SAR.
If you or the company or partnership you are acting for are in the ‘regulated sector’, (as defined in schedule 9 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002) you may have to submit a SAR to the National Crime Agency.
Send any SAR before you self-report.
How self-reporting could benefit your organisation
A company or partnership that fails to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion commits the corporate criminal offence.
However, it will have a defence if it can demonstrate it put in place reasonable prevention procedures to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion (or that it was not reasonable to expect it to have such procedures).
If you self-report your company or partnership it can be:
- used as part of the company or partnership’s ‘reasonable procedures’ defence if they’re charged with an offence
- taken into account by prosecutors when they make a decision about prosecutions (for example, Deferred Prosecution Agreements in England and Wales)
- reflected in any penalties that are imposed
Self-reporting does not guarantee that a company or partnership will not be prosecuted but it may be taken into account by HMRC, prosecutors and the courts.
Before you start
We recommend you read the guidance about corporate offences for failing to prevent criminal facilitation of tax evasion before you submit your report.
We may contact you to discuss the information you send us, so you must be prepared to act as a contact point.
It should take you around 40 minutes to complete the report.
After 15 minutes of inactivity you will be automatically logged out.
You can save your progress at any time and return to complete the report later.
What you’ll need
To self-report, you need a Government Gateway user ID and password. If you do not have a user ID, you can create one when you send your report.
You’ll need to give the following information about the company or partnership in your report:
- their address
- their Companies House registration number (if it has one)
- the organisation’s Unique Taxpayer Reference (if applicable)
- if the organisation is not based in the UK, their registration number in the country of formation
- the submission references of any previous self-reports made to HMRC
-
details of any reports made to any other agencies or bodies (such as a Suspicious Activity Report) relating to this incident
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information on how the tax evasion was facilitated, including:
- who in the company or partnership facilitated the evasion
- the capacity they were acting in
- how they facilitated the evasion
- what tax was evaded
- how the evasion was discovered
- an estimated date of when the facilitation ended (if it has stopped)
- the estimated figure for the amount of tax evasion that’s been facilitated (if known)
- an overview of any prevention procedures that the organisation has in place
How to submit a report
After you’ve submitted a report
You’ll be given a submission reference after you submit your report. We will use the reference if we contact you about the information you have sent, so keep a record of it.
You’ll also be given a chance to print your report after you have submitted it. We recommend that you do and keep a copy for your records.
We will process your report after you have submitted it, and personal data we collect will be processed in line with data protection law and our privacy note.
If we launch an investigation as a result of your self report we will contact you or someone else in the organisation to collect more information, including full details about the company or partnership’s prevention procedures to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion.
How HMRC will share the information in your report
We may share the information in your report with other agencies where the law allows it.