Your prospect already owes HMRC.
HMRC publishes a public list of UK businesses that deliberately defaulted on tax. Plus 736 directors disqualified for Covid-loan abuse in 2024-25 alone. We match prospect name + address + trade to both lists at confidence ≥ 0.8, before you sign.
HMRC publishes who’s already failed to pay them.
The HMRC defaulters list is a quarterly publication of UK businesses and individuals that have deliberately defaulted on tax liabilities, not late, not in error, but found to have evaded. Each entry includes name, registered address, declared trade, period of default, and the amount of tax plus penalty owed. The list is public; the data is available on gov.uk; almost no agency reads it before signing.
If your prospect’s name is on it, HMRC has already proven they’ll prioritise their own pocket over their creditors. You’re a downstream creditor of someone with a documented pattern of not paying.
The Bounce Back Loan trail.
Per the GOV.UK Insolvency Service report, of 1,037 director disqualifications in 2024-25, 736 were for Covid-loan abuse, typically Bounce Back Loans taken on false grounds, used for personal expenses, or extracted from the company before insolvency. The pattern is the financial controls failing before the company itself fails.
If a director on your prospect’s board appears in this disqualification register, the controls have already broken once. RecoupIQ surfaces both the company-level HMRC default and the director-level disqualification on every scan.
Score every prospect before you sign.
HMRC defaulter match is one signal of many. Phoenix detection, going-concern flags, charges, dissolutions all flow into the same risk band, in 90 seconds, free, before you sign anything.