The new failure to prevent fraud offence: cheating the public revenue

A new criminal offence is being introduced to make it easier to prosecute a large organisation if an employee or agent commits fraud from which it benefits in circumstances where that organisation cannot prove it had reasonable measures in place to prevent that happening. The specified fraud offences include the common law offence of cheating the public revenue. Tax practitioners need to be aware of the potential overlap, and also of the distinctions, between the existing failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion offence and the scope of this new failure to prevent offence.