On 13th March, alongside the Chancellor’s Spring Budget Statement, HMRC published the results of a telephone survey undertaken to enhance HMRC’s understanding of the impact of the commencement of the corporate criminal offences introduced in the Criminal Finances Act 2017 – the awareness of the new corporate criminal offences, and the extent to which the introduction of the corporate criminal offences has resulted in changes to the culture and behaviour change of companies and partnerships. One-quarter of all businesses surveyed reported that they were aware of the Criminal Finances Act 2017 – this rose to 34% when prompted that changes under the Act make businesses criminally liable for failing to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion. 32% of organisations believed the Act was relevant to their business to ‘at least some extent’, with only 9% saying it was relevant ‘to a great extent’. 20% of businesses were aware of the Act and had made changes to their operations directly because of it, with 11% saying that they were planning to introduce changes or make further changes in the next 12 months. One of the conclusions of the report is that it suggests that while awareness of the corporate criminal offences is currently relatively low across all UK companies and partnerships, over time firms are likely to be encouraged to put in place policies and procedures to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion
