HMRC Reinstating Struck Off Company

[Jumper]

Hi,

I thought I would ask the forum as to whether any scheme users have ever seen/heard/experienced HMRC applying to reinstate a Limited company (PSC) in order to reclaim tax or NI? Especially in the scenario where the loan charge has been paid.

thanks

[GregRickshaw]

Hi,

I thought I would ask the forum as to whether any scheme users have ever seen/heard/experienced HMRC applying to reinstate a Limited company (PSC) in order to reclaim tax or NI? Especially in the scenario where the loan charge has been paid.

thanks

There were rumours HMRC were doing this as part of their MSC investigation, I haven't seen anyone say this has happened though.

It's possible they can.

Have they reinstated yours?

[Fred Bloggs]

It's possible. Though for the cost of doing so and the likely amount recoverable, I can't see it happening. In an outlier case where there's hundreds of thousands at stake I would find it more credible. But for the average IR35 type one man band company I think it very unlikely.

I suppose somebody will give numerous examples where it's happened now that I said that.

[Jumper]

No, it’s not happened to me. My company was struck off a while back but I am aware that they can apply to reinstate but believe it’s not a simple/easy process and if they did they pursing the liability isn’t easy either. I was just thinking whether this could be a tactic that they could deploy.

[jamesbrown]

No, it’s not happened to me. My company was struck off a while back but I am aware that they can apply to reinstate but believe it’s not a simple/easy process and if they did they pursing the liability isn’t easy either. I was just thinking whether this could be a tactic that they could deploy.

It depends on the legislative context. It's easy enough to reinstate a company on the register. However, assuming the reason is to allow for a debt to be enforced on the company, initially, and then formally transferred to an individual later on, then that has traditionally been very hard, absent fraud. That's probably why there aren't many known cases or anecdotes. If the legislative context is IR35, for example, it would be very hard to transfer a debt to the individual, assuming even the meekest attempt by the individual to assess IR35 risk. If the legislative context is the MSC legislation, though, it's a very different matter. It will be "interesting" to see how that plays out.