The Key Changes that Recruitment Agencies and freelance contractors cannot afford to ignore.
Are you prepared for this new law? In effect from September 30th are you aware of its impact and how it affects you?
The time is now to ensure that you are fully protected in the light of HMRC’s new Corporate Offence of Failure to prevent the Criminal Facilitation of Tax Evasion.
Implications for recruitment agencies
The law is relevant whether you are a recruitment agency contracting in the UK or overseas. The law not only affects banks, accountancy and advisory firms but applies to all partnerships and LLP’s.
This places a greater emphasis on your supply chain, and places your organisation at odds with the new law if there is any weak links. It could result in criminal sanctions for any recruitment agency directors to be in breach of tough new rules.
A recruitment company, umbrella company or accountancy firm cannot knowingly provide any tax avoidance “products” or services to act as a smoke screen for the purpose of saving on your labour costs and improving the net take home of your contractors.
If it is too good to be true it probably is…
You should be wary of the following type of promises
“90% take home for contractors after tax”
“No charge to you or your contractors”
“An employee benefit scheme acting as a non-repayable loan”
“No risk to your organisation we absorb all employment risk”
“Reduce your operating costs”
Unscrupulous providers who may be in it for the short term have no concern for the longevity and reputation of you and your business.
If you are looking for a service of genuine value and a long term successful partnership you must be wary of these ridiculous and unsubstantiated sales or tag lines.
So how does this affect you?
Not to sugar coat this, and getting straight to the point, if you work with an uncompliant element within your supply chain this will have a detrimental effect on you directly.
What the law states
For an offence to be committed:
- There must be criminal tax evasion under either UK or foreign law
- It must be enabled by the business’ employee, agent or anyone performing services to the business
- The business must have failed to prevent that person from enabling the crime
The offence itself will have three stages:
Stage 1: criminal tax evasion by a taxpayer. This could be the offence of cheating the public revenue or fraudulently evading the liability to pay VAT.
Stage 2: criminal facilitation of this offence by a person acting on behalf of the corporation, whether by taking steps with a view to; being knowingly concerned in; or aiding, abetting, counselling, or procuring the tax evasion by the taxpayer.
Stage 3: If there has been a criminal offence at stage 1 and stage 2, a corporation is then liable for having failed to prevent a person associated with it from committing the criminal act at stage 2.
For your consideration
It is essential that you are able to show and demonstrate that you have “reasonable procedures” in place to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion.
This means that you need to be clear of the risks associated with your contractors, employees, third parties and all their procedures and activities in relation to all relevant tax liabilities being met.
You could be liable if someone associated with your recruitment agency knowingly assists a contractor in evading tax in the UK or overseas. Or if you have any suspicions or know that a contractor is evading tax in some way.
For the avoidance of doubt, ignorance of a law is no defence.
Our Practical advice for recruitment companies
- Read the legislation in full
- Carry out a thorough risk assessment on your internal processes
- Ensure from bottom to top that everyone in your organisation understands the scope and far reaching nature of the legislation
- Check that all of your preferred providers, or indeed any umbrella companies or contractor accountancy providers can prove that they follow compliant professional standards and are not exposing you to the very real risk
