Criminal liability of tax advisors

Written by Guillaume Pellegrin

Published in the special feature “liability of tax advisors” of the Revue de Droit Fiscal

“Tax advisor/advice (or conseil fiscal, a polysemous term which in French refers to both the person giving the advice and the advice itself) is a notion that lacks a clear definition for the purposes of French criminal law. The absence of normative texts is likely to be prejudicial to the advisors in question, who are exposed to a risk of criminal liability that goes beyond the question of a possible conviction. Tax advisors indeed face the prospect of coercive criminal investigations (in situations that are admittedly varied, but generally unfavorable), and of criminal sanctions marked by a high degree of judicial uncertainty when it comes to determining the criminal nature of their involvement, particularly in complex cases”. Read more