Making a company dormant or closing?

[blueberrysorbet]

due to babies and living abroad I have done nothing with my company for a year and will not in the forseeable. have no debts, some cash in the bank and its not worth selling so just want to either close it or make it dormant. have de registered vat and owe no corp. tax. any advice on which to do? i have no accountant as i have done all that myself

am about to close the bank account down asap.
thanks!

It is harder to close a company down than to start one up!

I assume this company is registered in England and Wales? What you probably want to do is apply to have the company struck off. Here is the Companies House guidance. The only drawback with striking off is that if anyone has a claim against the company within the next 20 years they can apply to have it restored and persue it for the debt. The only way to avoid this is a Members Voluntary Liquidation - [[http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/gbhtml/gpo8.shtml#ch5 guidance here. To do this you must appoint a liquidator who is registered as such and will charge a fee.

If you just want to keep the company dormant all it will cost you is the £15 (online) annual return filing fee. Again there is guidance on this, and the online filing form actually includes a template for a dormant company so this is the easiest way to go, except that you have to do it every year of course.

Oops, this should be more legible...

It is harder to close a company down than to start one up!

I assume this company is registered in England and Wales? What you probably want to do is apply to have the company struck off. Here is the Companies House guidance.

The only drawback with striking off is that if anyone has a claim against the company within the next 20 years they can apply to have it restored and persue it for the debt. The only way to avoid this is a Members Voluntary Liquidation -
guidance here. To do this you must appoint a liquidator who is registered as such and will charge a fee.

If you just want to keep the company dormant all it will cost you is the £15 (online) annual return filing fee. Again there is guidance on this, and the online filing form actually includes a template for a dormant company so this is the easiest way to go, except that you have to do it every year of course.

Striking off a non-trading company with no debts is actually very easy and the time limit to apply for restoration is 6 years except in cases of personal injury.

Thanks for the correction - time for some CPD I think [searches for CA 2006 update course].

thanks, that's helpful

Unfortunately I've struck enough companies off to become rather familiar with the process... CA 2006 is really not that interesting (in fact not at all) so I'd spend my hard earned CPD time off work on something else