Recruitment Agencies, What’s Your Process to Protect Against Tax-Evasion?
In September 2017 the Criminal Finance Act was introduced, and along with it the introduction of new offences for any business that fails to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion. The two new offences are:
- Failure to prevent the facilitation of UK tax evasion by a person associated with the company.
- Failure to prevent the facilitation of foreign tax evasion by a person associated with the company.
For the offence to succeed there must be criminal tax evasion, the facilitation of tax evasion must be done by a person associated with the company, and that the company has failed to prevent its associated person from facilitating the offence.
Unfortunately for businesses such as yours, the risk of being caught by these offences as high. Even if the business has no knowledge or suspicion that the offences were taking place, you can still be considered guilty.
This mirrors the stance taken under the Bribery Act 2010 and is designed in this way to encourage businesses to take significant steps to stamp out such offences from their workplace.
What you can do to protect your agency
It is a legitimate defence to prosecution under the Criminal Finance Act if you can demonstrate that you have reasonable prevention procedures in place or if it would not be reasonable to expect your company to have prevention procedures in place.
HMRC have issued guidance on the types of prevention procedures they would expect to see:
- Risk assessment
- Top-level commitment
- Due diligence
- Communication (including training); and
- Monitoring and review
By adding Plus to your Preferred Supplier List, tax evasion is one less thing to worry about!
Allowing workers to use an umbrella company of their choosing presents a significant risk of tax evasion for your recruitment agency. Besides, by vetting and verifying each new umbrella company you are approached by will expend significant time and effort for your teams.
Instead, Professional Passport, the largest independent assessor of umbrella compliance in the temporary workers market, have a ready-made preferred supplier list on their website where you will find Plus Payroll Services. Included within our competitive margin of £15.00 per week, our umbrella workers are covered by employers liability, public liability and professional indemnity insurance. This is alongside our other great value-adding services:
- Faster payments
- Employee self-service app and portal
- Employment rights
- Perkbox subscription
- No fee to join!
To find out more about Plus Payroll Services you can visit our website at www.pluspay.uk.com or you can call us on 03333 110 222 and speak to a helpful customer service advisor.
*This document is not a substitute for specific legal, accounting or other professional advice or opinions on related matters and issues that arise and should not be taken as providing specific advice on any of the topics discussed.
The information contained herein has been prepared by using sources believed to be reliable. Whilst reasonable care has been taken to ensure that the facts stated herein are accurate, no representation or warranty, express or implied is made by Plus Payroll Services Limited, with respect to completeness, correctness, reasonableness or accuracy of any information and opinions contained herein.
Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, liability for any negligent or innocent statement or misstatement in respect of the contents of, or any omission from this document are hereby expressly excluded. Plus Payroll Services Limited has no obligation or liability whatsoever with respect to the information provided or any action or inaction of Plus Payroll Services Limited or the recipient with respect to such information.