Cases referred to the Courts by HMRC and its representatives for bankruptcy, sequestration and liquidation: FOI release

Information requested

During the period since July 2021:

1. The number of cases that have been referred to the Courts by HMRC and its representatives for bankruptcy, sequestration and liquidation.

2. How many of those submitted resulted in bankruptcy, sequestration or liquidation?

3. Who pays the Court costs in these cases and can you supply details of costs in each case?

4. How many are paid for by the public purse?

5. Can you let me know your counterparts in, England, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Response

I am able to provide some of the information you requested.

1. Since July 2021 1,641 petitions for bankruptcy (sequestrations) have been presented to court. Of these 253 were presented by HMRC.

I am not not able to provide the same information for liquidations. The Accountant in Bankruptcy only records compulsory liquidations that have been awarded, therefore we have no information relating to pending or dismissed petitions.

There are currently 3,519 compulsory liquidation entries on our case management system awarded from July 2021. The system does not hold a field for petitioning creditor, however, this information may be contained within documents attached to the case. To assess if the information is held we would need to look at individual documents in every case. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, we are not required to comply with a request if we estimate the cost of compliance would exceed the upper cost limit under section 12 of FOISA. Therefore, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested for liquidations would exceed the £600 limit set by Regulations.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could reduce the date range of your enquiry. We publish details of liquidations on a quarterly basis on our website, quarter 4 of 2023/2024 can be found here. This may assist you as we could check approximately 800 cases to retrieve the information requested on this subject.

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on their website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx

2. HMRC have submitted 253 bankruptcy petitions to court since July 2021. Of these 53 still await a decision (new / warrant to cite), 125 were awarded and 75 were dismissed.

A table illustrating this information is also attached.

I am not not able to provide the same information for liquidations for the reasons given above.

3. The petitioner is responsible for paying costs to the court. Where there are sufficient funds ingathered they can request reimbursement from the estate.

I am not able to give details as this information is not provided to the Accountant in Bankruptcy unless a Scheme of Division Account is submitted when the trustee is ready to disburse available funds to creditors. A check of the 125 awarded bankruptcy cases has established this type of account is not yet held.

I am unable to provide this information for liquidations as again the Accountant in Bankruptcy would only be provided with the information when the liquidator has distributed the funds. Also the cost of retrieval would exceed the cost limit as set out at question 1.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could reduce the date range of your enquiry. We publish details of liquidations on a quarterly basis on our website, quarter 4 of 2023/2024 can be found here. This may assist you as we could check approximately 800 cases to retrieve the information requested on this subject.

Please note if you were to require answers for questions 1/2 and 3 we would only be able to check approximately 400 cases for each subject.

4. As HMRC is a public authority these costs will be met from the public purse, therefore, you will require to request this information from HMRC.

5. Our counterparts are the UK Insolvency Service for England and Wales and the Insolvency Service for Northern Ireland.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202400398403 - Information released - Annex

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