As you and your business grow, changes will inevitably occur. These can range from the address where you keep your records, to your business name, to a new company secretary.
As a director, it’s up to you to make sure that changes such as these are filed, correctly and to the right organization. In this blog post we’ll give you a list of what, where and when to file changes to your company to make your life a director just that little bit easier:
Changes you have to file with HMRC
If your business’ contact details change – For example, your name, gender, business name or your personal or trading address. If any of these changes happen you need to make sure that you’ve updated your details everywhere, including everything you’ve registered for including VAT and corporation tax.
Appointing someone to deal with HMRC on your behalf – This can be a professional accountant, a friend, a relative or someone from a voluntary organisation. If you do this, the person you authorise must meet HMRC’s standard of agents. If you do appoint someone to deal with HMRC on your behalf, they have you abide by HRMC’s standard for agents and you need to ask them to use HMRC’s online authorization service or complete form 64-8 and send it to HMRC.
Authorising someone to manage your tax online – By registering a friend or family to manage your tax online, that person becomes a ‘trusted helper’. Their role will entail making sure you’re paying the right amount of tax, checking and updating your personal tax, claiming tax refunds and checking and updating your company car tax. Doing this doesn’t absolve you of your tax responsibility, you will still be legally responsible for your tax.
Authorising an Intermediary – As a director, you should take this course of action if you have a disability or don’t speak English. Whilst an intermediary won’t have access to your tax online, they will be able to talk with HMRC, answer any questions on your behalf and assist you in filling in forms. To appoint an intermediary, you need to write a letter to HMRC that includes your name, address and your signature, your tax reference number, name, and address of the intermediary. You will need to send this to; National Insurance contributions and Employers Office, HM Revenue and Customs, BX9 1AN.
Changes you have to file with Companies House
Changing your registered office address – When you form a limited company, you must submit a registered office address. For example, if you move offices, you will need to let Companies House know of the change and the new registered office address. Once approved Companies House will tell HMRC of the change.
It’s important to note that your new registered office address has to be in the same part of the UK that the company was registered, e.g. if the company was registered in England and Wales, your new registered office address needs to be in England and Wales. If you’re a customer of The Formations Company and decide to take advantage of our Registered Agent service, we’ll take care of this for you.
Changing the address where you keep your records – If you change the address where you keep all your records and specifically which records you keep there, you will need to let Companies House know within 14 days of the change.
Changing Directors or their personal details – If you get any new directors, existing directors leave or any personal information about directors’ change, again you will have to inform Companies House within 14 days of the change.
Changing of ‘people with significant control (PSC)’ – This is the same as directors; if a PSC leaves, or you get a new one or personal details change, you will have to tell Companies House within 14 days.
New or removing a company secretary – If you get a new company secretary or decide you don’t want to continue with your existing company secretary, you must tell companies house within 14 days.
Issuing more shares – If you issue more shares in your company, you must tell companies house within 30 days.
If you’re a customer of The Formations Company, our helpful customer service team will be able to help with this, otherwise, this can be done online or by filling out the correct forms.
Changes other shareholders must approve
If there is more than 1 director of your company, there are certain changes that need to be voted on and approved. When voting for changes between shareholders, the majority decision wins, and this is called passing a resolution.
To figure out what the majority is, you should count the number of shares, rather than the number of shareholders. The changes that require a shareholder vote are:
- change the company name
- remove a director
- change the company’s articles of association
You can find more detail on the changes that need to be filed with Companies House using this link.
It’s not just changes to your company that you will need to file with HMRC and Companies House, you’ll also need to complete your annual fillings. We’ll discuss this further in part 4.