Market evaluation from Credas Applied sciences, the main identification verification checks supplier, has revealed that the overwhelming majority of property brokers are at the hours of darkness concerning the authorities’s Financial Crime Levy (ECL), when it was carried out or even when they could owe charges on account of its implementation.
The ECL is an annual cost collected by both the Monetary Conduct Authority, the Playing Fee or HMRC, from organisations who’re supervised beneath the Cash Laundering Rules and whose revenues exceed £10.2m per yr.
Launched to deal with financial crime, these affected should register for the ECL, submit a return annually and pay the required charge.
The ECL impacts organisations which can be classed as medium (£10.2m to £36m), massive (£36m to £1bn) or very massive (£1bn+) based mostly on their income, with charges starting from £10,000 to £250,000 relying on the scale of the entity. The brand new levy is anticipated to boost within the area of £100 million a yr and can partly assist fund the federal government’s new financial crime plan.
Property and letting brokers are certainly one of eight sectors impacted by its introduction for the final monetary yr, which means that the primary spherical of ECL charges are because of be paid this September.
Nonetheless, a survey of UK lettings and property brokers carried out by Credas Applied sciences discovered that 74% are unaware of the Financial Crime Levy.
83% have been unaware as to when it was carried out, whereas 81% additionally didn’t know what income threshold they might be topic to an ECL charge from.
Moreover, 78% said they didn’t know which sectors have been impacted by its introduction, 79% didn’t understand how the charge construction labored, 79% have been unaware when a possible charge was because of be paid, with the bulk (80%) additionally unaware as to how they might pay a possible ECL charge.
Tim Barnett, CEO of Credas Applied sciences, stated, “The Financial Crime Levy could seem to be one other paperwork headache from the powers that be and given its relative infancy, it’s comprehensible that many property and letting brokers are nonetheless at the hours of darkness about it.
With the property sector being probably the most prone to money-laundering it’s one thing that many brokers will have to be on high of, not solely in relation to finishing their return annually, but in addition paying the charge due.”