Update about the mailbox trial for VAT deregistration confirmation — insolvency practitioner bulletin 5 (2023)
Published 31 January 2025
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We have been trialling a dedicated mailbox for insolvency practitioners to request VAT deregistration confirmation.
The mailbox was strictly for use when insolvency practitioners have been unable to obtain a response through the normal channels.
In line with our HMRC Charter values of ‘making things easy’ and ‘being responsive’, we launched a feedback survey to gain valuable insight into how the trial is supporting the insolvency practitioner (IP) or not.
The Deregistration Mailbox Survey revealed overwhelming support for the trial to continue for the future.
The trial is due to end on the 30 May 2023, however, based on the survey feedback, we have decided to commit to the mailbox service for the foreseeable future.
We continue to support the insolvency practitioner sector with continuous improvement and will continually drive for better and more digital solutions.
How the trial has progressed
The trial has been running for 5 months and to date over 500 insolvency practitioners have used the mailbox.
We started the trial as a short-term fix in response to listening to your difficulties in getting through to the VAT deregistration telephone lines.
The deregistration survey informed us, the mailbox service is supporting you the insolvency practitioner, to reduce repeat calls into HMRC, reduce costs, close cases quicker and save time, and this has led to the service being maintained.
Help us help you
To continue to meet our commitment of 15 working days service level agreement, we would ask you to be mindful of the following rules:
- the VAT 7 must have been submitted more than 40 days ago
- the mailbox is purely for requesting a deregistration date, any secondary queries will result in the email been unanswered and deleted, this is to ensure the team can process the high volumes of requests within the service level agreement
- the contact form cannot be scanned as the system will not read the data
- in the email subject header box write — Insolvency Dereg Date Request
- do not progress chase with the insolvency customer service team before 15 working days have passed
- exclusion cases which include a VAT group may incur additional time frames outside of 15 working days
Further questions
Please contact R3 or your representative group who will contact HMRC.