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<p>The Government is committed to tackling tax avoidance and ensuring that companies
and individuals pay their fair share of tax.</p><p> </p><p>HMRC has a suite of powers
to tackle and challenge those who promote or otherwise enable tax avoidance. Those
who design, sell, manage or otherwise promote tax avoidance schemes face a range of
sanctions including penalties if they fail to disclose their schemes to HMRC where
required to do so under the Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes (DOTAS) regime. They
can also face action under the Promoters of Tax Avoidance Schemes (POTAS) regime which
includes imposing conditions on them to ensure they change their behaviour. And, if
any person (not just a scheme promoter) enables another person to use abusive tax
arrangements which HMRC later defeats, they could be subject to the an ‘Enabler’s’
penalty.</p><p>Under the ‘Enablers’ penalty, introduced in Finance (No. 2) Act 2017,
anyone who knowingly enables another person to use an abusive tax arrangement that
is later defeated by HMRC will face a penalty of 100% of the fees they have earned
from that activity. This new legislation is at the forefront of HMRC work to disrupt
the avoidance market, identifying both the schemes and the individuals behind them
and acting quickly to challenge them. It strengthens HMRC’s tools for tackling both
promoters and others who profit from enabling others to try to avoid tax.</p><p>The
effectiveness of HMRC’s powers is kept under review.</p><p> </p>
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