An Overview of Recent Reforms
Companies House is currently going through a period of big change. The purpose is to protect you as a director or other officer of a Limited Company or Limited Liability Partnership. The reforms are driven by the need to adapt to modern business practices and technological advancements. Too many unscrupulous people were able to take advantage of a system that was somewhat out of date.
So how will you, as the director, shareholder or other office of a company be affected?
The changes include:
- Companies House now has greater powers to query the information being submitted, if they think it looks wrong or not consistent with information already held on the register.
- There are stronger checks on company names if they are like to give a misleading impression to the public
- There are new rules for registered office addresses – basically it needs to be a proper address, whereby any document delivered to said address can be reasonably be expected to be received by the person authorised to act for the company – for example it cannot be a PO Box.
- There is a new requirement when a company is registered that the subscribers need t0 confirm they are form the company or a lawful purpose and we are already seeing on the confirmation statement confirmation that the company’s intended future activities are lawful.
- There will be a requirement for new directors and persons with significant control (PSCs), existing directors and PSCs and anyone else acting on behalf of a company to verify their identity. This will include Dionne at DS Small Business Help Ltd who will be an Authorised Corporate Services Provider. Thus ensuring that when we act on your behalf, you and your company continues to be protected. Failure to comply with identity verification requirements on time will be deemed an offence for which there will be a range of consequences including a financial penalty.
- An e-mail address for every company must be supplied. This has to relate to the company and cannot be our e-mail address.
- From later on this year it will be possible to suppress personal information from historical documents, thus helping to protect individuals.
Of course there is a cost to all of this and the annual filing fee has increased from £13 to £34 per year. However, The annual filing fee has been £13 (for electronic filing) since 2012, so it is reasonable to expect an increase and if this helps to protect you as a director and shareholders, plus your company from potentially having its reputation damaged, it is a small price to pay – an of course it is fully tax relievable, so even if your corporation tax rate is 19%, that saves £6.46 in tax which means the actual cost is £27.54.
We will guide our clients through all of the changes as necessary but if you do have any questions, please do call Dionne on 07977 169206.