Am I required to undertake customer due diligence under ML regs for low-value, one-off advice?

[hendersontax]

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether customer due diligence is required where you are providing one-off, low-value (say <£1k) tax advice to a private individual, even if you are providing the advice online and having never met the client?

Reading paragraph 68 onwards in https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKUT/TCC/2019/167.html it seems that there is arguably NO such requirement on the basis that there is not the required 'element of duration' to establish a business relationship which triggers the regulations (the 2017 regs have similar wording to the 2007 regs, on which the judgment is based, in this respect) - and assuming none of the other triggers in reg 27 are met (i.e. money laundering or terrorist financing not suspected, no doubt of the veracity or adequacy of documents or information previously obtained for the purposes of identification of verification).

[JimLittle]

Yes of course regardless of £1 or £1K. The new money laundering guidelines are stricter

I would go further as you should get the ID documents certified or carry out a verification check online.

[hendersontax]

Thanks, Jim. I appreciate there is no difference between £1 and £1k as such - the judgment is interesting though as it discusses whether or not a "one-off, short-lived" transaction has the necessary "element of duration" (reg 4(1)(b)) to trigger the legal obligation for CDD under the regs - making the point that the regulations themselves define and discuss such 'occasional transactions' separately with a 15k EUR de minimis under reg 27(2), the clear implication being that a business relationship with the necessary 'element of duration' must involve more than an occasional transaction. The 2017 regulations are stricter but they are still structured in the same way in this regard.

Can I ask then, how would you typically go about CDD for an individual who approaches you online and asks for such one-off advice? If a client provides me with a certified copy of a passport and I verify that online then all that proves is the passport is a genuine one, not that the person you are emailing is the person on the passport. If it's not practical to meet that person, and you wish to correspond by email rather than their verified postal address (let's say they live overseas and postal correspondence is slow, expensive and impractical), then I struggle to see how you can properly identify the client unless, perhaps, you have a video conference call. So I'm interested to know where I would stand legally if that were not possible for whatever reason.