UK: consultation on new corporate criminal offence - the failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion

Four consultation papers were published today by HMRC under the title of 'Tackling offshore evasion': see here. One of these papers seeks views on a new corporate criminal offence - the failure by a company or partnership to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion - and is available here (pdf). This new offence is modelled on one of the criminal offences introduced by the Bribery Act 2010: the failure by a commercial organisation to prevent bribery.