Which Creditor Will Move First Depends on Your State: Winding-Up Applications by State, July 2026

Which Creditor Will Move First Depends on Your State: Winding-Up Applications by State, July 2026

Winding-up risk is not the same problem in every State. In July 2026, 90.9% of Western Australian applications came from the ATO — against 19.1% in Victoria. A Perth director worrying about who moves first is almost always right to worry about tax. A Melbourne director who worries only about tax is watching the wrong four-fifths: Victorian companies were more likely to be wound up by an energy retailer or the State Revenue Office. In New South Wales the largest applicant was not the ATO at all — it was the workers compensation Nominal Insurer. Same law, completely different risk.

Here is the State-by-State breakdown of 472 applications, and what each pattern means for a director in that State.

Every application below was made under section 459P of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), and published because section 465A requires an applicant to lodge notice of the application and serve a copy on the company.

Volume by State

Victoria produced more applications than New South Wales — 204 against 161 — on a smaller economy. Western Australia produced 11. That is not a measure of how many businesses are in trouble in each State; it is a measure of how aggressively creditors in each State use this particular remedy, and which creditors are doing it.

Who is applying, State by State

South Australia and Western Australia were too small to break down meaningfully, but both were dominated by tax: 10 of 17 South Australian applications and 10 of 11 Western Australian ones came from the ATO.

Victoria: it is not mainly a tax problem

Victoria had the most applications in the country and the lowest ATO share of any mainland State — 19.1%. What replaces it is a broad spread of commercial creditors:

• Energy and fuel suppliers brought 43 applications, more than the ATO did. Viva Energy, Origin, Covau, AGL and Alinta all appear. Fuel cards and electricity accounts are being enforced to judgment and beyond.
• The State Revenue Office brought 23 — all of them Victorian, all run in-house rather than through a panel firm. Payroll tax is a live winding-up risk in Victoria in a way it was not anywhere else in the dataset.
• Financiers brought 25, largely equipment and receivables funders.
• Trade creditors brought 64, the highest count of any non-tax category in any State.

The practical read for a Victorian director: there is no single creditor to watch. Risk is distributed, which means a company can be current with the ATO and still be a fortnight from a hearing. Payroll tax and the power bill deserve the same seat at the table as the BAS.

New South Wales: two creditors, three quarters of the risk

New South Wales is the opposite shape — highly concentrated. The workers compensation Nominal Insurer brought 65 applications and the ATO 53. Those two accounted for 73.3% of every winding-up application filed in the State that month. Everything else — trade, finance, energy, ASIC — shared the remaining 43.

The order matters. In New South Wales, unpaid workers compensation premiums put more companies in front of a winding-up judge than unpaid tax did. Premiums are compulsory under section 155 of the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW) and recoverable as a debt under section 172, and the recovery function runs to a schedule through a small panel of firms. A NSW director in a payment arrangement with the ATO has dealt with the second-largest risk, not the largest.

Queensland: tax, trade, and an unusually active ASIC

Queensland looks conventional at first — the ATO at 44.4% and trade creditors at 29.2%. The outlier is ASIC, which brought 8 applications in Queensland out of 9 nationally.

ASIC applications are a different animal. They generally follow regulatory failure rather than a single unpaid invoice — abandoned companies, unresolved compliance breaches, companies with no functioning directors. If a Queensland company has stopped lodging and stopped responding, the pathway to being wound up does not require any creditor to be owed anything at all.

What this changes about how you prepare

• Rank your creditors by your State's pattern, not by national instinct. "The ATO is the one that winds companies up" is true in Perth and wrong in Sydney and Melbourne.
• Multi-State operations have multi-State exposure. A company with payroll in Victoria and workers in New South Wales carries Victorian payroll tax risk and NSW premium risk simultaneously, from two agencies that do not talk to each other.
• Concentration cuts both ways. In New South Wales, two conversations cover most of your risk. In Victoria there is no such shortcut — you need a full creditor list, ranked by who has actually taken a step.
• The trigger is the same everywhere. Whichever creditor moves, the mechanism is a statutory demand under section 459E, 21 days to comply, failure to comply under section 459F, then a presumption of insolvency under section 459C(2)(a) available to the creditor for three months. The 21 days is the window in which real options exist, in every State.

Method

Source: ASIC's Published Notices register, all winding-up application notices published between 1 and 31 July 2026. 479 notices were published in the month; 472 were retrievable in enough detail to analyse, and those 472 are the denominator for every figure above. State is the State in which the application was published, which is ordinarily the State of the court hearing it, not necessarily where the company trades. Applicant creditors were categorised by a named-entity list: every distinct applicant in the dataset is assigned to a category explicitly by name, and any entity not on the list falls to trade and other private creditors. An earlier keyword-matching pass was discarded because substring rules silently miscount — "workers comp" does not match "workers' compensation" and "BP Australia" does not match "B P Australia", and the totals still reconcile either way. Workers compensation figures include nominal insurers, WorkCover authorities, portable long service benefits authorities and the private underwriters of State schemes; the three applications by a private underwriter of the Victorian scheme are counted in that category but excluded from the government and statutory total of 260. One application named no applicant on the notice and is shown separately rather than assumed to be a trade creditor. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place. The dataset counts applications made, not winding-up orders granted; some of these companies will have paid, settled or been adjourned before hearing. One month is a snapshot, not a trend — treat the State patterns as indicative of how each jurisdiction's major creditors operate rather than as a forecast.

Common questions

Which Australian State has the most winding-up applications?

Victoria. In July 2026 Victoria recorded 204 of 472 applications — 43.2% of the national total — ahead of New South Wales with 161 (34.1%) and Queensland with 72 (15.3%). South Australia had 17, Western Australia 11, the ACT 4, the Northern Territory 2 and Tasmania 1.

Who winds up the most companies in Victoria?

No single creditor dominates. In July 2026, trade and private creditors brought 64 of Victoria's 204 applications, energy and fuel suppliers 43, the ATO 39, financiers 25 and the State Revenue Office 23. At 19.1%, the ATO's share of Victorian applications was the lowest of any mainland State.

Who winds up the most companies in New South Wales?

The Workers Compensation Nominal Insurer, with 65 of 161 applications in July 2026 — ahead of the ATO's 53. Those two creditors accounted for 73.3% of all NSW winding-up applications that month.

Can the State Revenue Office wind up my company over payroll tax?

Yes. In July 2026 the Victorian State Revenue Office brought 23 winding-up applications, all in Victoria and all run in-house rather than through an external law firm. Unpaid payroll tax is a debt like any other and supports an application under section 459P of the Corporations Act 2001.

Why does Victoria have more winding-up applications than New South Wales?

Composition rather than economy size. Victoria's applications come from a much broader base of commercial creditors — energy and fuel suppliers, financiers and trade creditors together brought 132 of the 204 — while New South Wales activity is concentrated in two large statutory creditors. Victorian creditors across the board make heavier use of the winding-up remedy.

Can ASIC apply to wind up a company?

Yes. ASIC brought 9 applications in July 2026, 8 of them in Queensland. ASIC applications typically follow regulatory failure — abandoned companies, unresolved breaches, or companies without functioning officeholders — rather than a single unpaid debt.

Does it matter which State my company is registered in?

The law is national, but the creditors are not. Which agency is most likely to move against you, how quickly, and through which law firm all vary substantially by State. A company operating across State lines carries several of these risk profiles at once.

Where I fit

I'm not a liquidator, trustee or administrator, and I don't act for creditors. I work out which of your creditors has actually taken a formal step and which is still just sending letters — because those need completely different responses — then map the personal exposure sitting behind each of them and set out the real options: payment arrangement, Small Business Restructuring, deed of company arrangement, or a controlled wind-up. Then I coordinate the right practitioner. In 38 years I've never once heard someone say they acted too early.

If a demand or an application has landed, wherever you are, book a phone or video time at resolvency.com.au/book or call 0457 099 099.

General information only — not financial, legal or tax advice. Everyone's position is different, so get advice specific to yours before you act.

Related service: Liquidation & Wind-Up Coordination — see how I can help.