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Direction to recover debt

Where the circumstances outlined in E4.917 above apply, an officer of HMRC is entitled to make a direction authorising recovery of the debt, or part of the debt, from the specified persons. The grounds for the issue of the direction are that the MSC has a relevant debt and an officer is of the opinion that all or part of the debt is irrecoverable from the MSC within a reasonable period¹. Once the direction has been issued, all specified persons become jointly and severally liable for the debt². However, the law restricts HMRC from recovering any part of the debt from the persons concerned until a transfer notice has been issued on the person in question³.

As the tax and NIC will be due, in the first instance, by the MSC, anyone to whom the debt may be transferred in fact has an interest in any demand for tax/NIC from HMRC before the transfer of debt provisions come into play. As can be seen from the Christianuyi