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Worrying rise in criminal and civil penalties aimed at advisers

Giving “anything but ‘vanilla’ tax planning is becoming dangerous for advisers”, as they face a rise in civil and criminal penalties aimed preventing tax evasion, James Quarmby, private client partner at Stephenson Harwood has warned.

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Quarmby is concerned by two threats – failure to prevent and enabler offences. The failure to prevent is an instance where a firm does not act to stop tax evasion.

The second offence is when an adviser, through the course of tax planning or investment advice, enables an aggressive scheme.

Both can lead to civil and criminal charges.

“IFAs who are involved in any kind of tax planning, apart from the most mundane, would need to be concerned about the enabler penalties,” Quarmby told International Adviser. “For instance, many in the IFA industry have actively marketed or been involved in film schemes and other now discredited ‎tax avoidance arrangements. In future IFAS should consider carefully whether it is worth the risk of participating in this market.

“As for failure to prevent, it is crucial that IFA firms put in place proper procedures as this is the only defense to a failure to prevent allegation.”

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Failure to prevent

To be caught under failure to prevent takes three steps:

1. A taxpayer has committed criminal tax evasion under existing UK or foreign law although no actual conviction is necessary;
2. An associated person or relevant body criminally facilitated the tax evasion; and,
3. If an offence has been met at both stages then the relevant body becomes liable unless the statutory defense applies, where there are reasonable prevention procedures in place.

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Enabler

To be an enabler of tax avoidance is where a person has entered into an abusive tax arrangement and a person incurs a defeat.

Penalties are equal to the total amount or value of all the relevant consideration received or receivable with a potential for naming and shaming by HM Revenue & Customs. Funds must be raised in two years.

An enabler is anyone including a designer of arrangements, managers who organize it, marketers who make the arrangement available or explains the advantages and anyone who enters into an arrangement which without them the tax advantage could not be achieved.

 

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