CIPC will de-register your company
Over the holidays, I ran a sample of the companies that we have, in the past, registered for clients, to see what was their status at CIPC. 41% of them had either been finally de-registered, were “In de-registration process”, or had outstanding CIPC returns and were therefore one step short of being in de-registration process. So there’s a very good chance that your company falls into the 41% category! The consequences are dire.
If your company is in de-registration process, the banks will have nothing to do with it. They don’t get flagged automatically, so you may not find this out until you want to increase your overdraft, or take out finance for a vehicle. Then you’ll have raised a red flag with your bank and it will sit on their records. You’ll also have a mad scramble to submit your outstanding returns and restore your company to “In business”.
But worse than that, CIPC can push the button at any time and finally de-register all companies that are “In de-registration process”. Then you’re really stuck. Once a company has been de-registered by CIPC it ceases to exist in law, except that its liabilities do not go away. It can no longer contract or trade and the re-instatement process is either slow, difficult and costly, or impossible.
And it is so simple to avoid this sorry state of affairs. When we register your company, we load it onto our CRM system which then automatically sends you an email about a week before the CIPC return falls due. If you make the small payment, your return gets done during the following one month window and the reminder date is rolled forward to the next year. If you don’t respond, you will receive a reminder about 2 weeks later. If you don’t respond to that, then the reminder date is not rolled over and you won’t get any more emails. Unless you have someone else caring for your business, you’ll end up being one of the 41% of de-registered companies.
It just takes a phone call to 087 655 1478 or 011 805 0030 to ask us to check you CIPC status, so give us a call now, before you forget.
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