The Compendium

A Comprehensive Companion for All in the Insolvency and Restructuring Profession

If the CGA is signed, the company then has seven days to pay back the debt and distraint fees. If this is not paid in that time, the officer can then remove the assets to sell at auction.

[See ‘HMRC’, ‘Controlled Goods Agreement’ and ‘CGA’.]

Tax Code

A tax code is a combination of numbers and letters given to a person to show HMRC how much Income Tax and National Insurance they should be paying.

A tax code shows the amount of tax-free income an employee should receive in a single tax year; this is also known as their ‘personal allowance’.

A person’s tax code is based on their personal allowance, income from another job, any taxable benefits, money they may owe from previous years, as well as other things. A person’s code will be individual to them.

HMRC will normally issue a tax coding notice to a person annually, if they qualify for one, and this has accompanying pages which will explain the differences in the most recent code, compared to previous years and other people.

A tax code will be recorded, and can be found, on a person’s payslip or tax code letter from HMRC.

[See ‘HMRC’ and ‘Personal Allowance’.]

Technical Insolvency

There is a formal or ‘technical’ definition of insolvency contained in section 123 Insolvency Act 1986.

It states that a company is ‘insolvent’ if a company is ‘unable to pay its debts’ and this occurs when:

  • a creditor to whom the company is indebted in a sum exceeding £750 has served on it a written demand (in the prescribed form) requiring the company to pay the due sum and the company does not pay the sum within three weeks; or