Let us look at another possible scenario you may face where your company is deregistered although you are not aware simply because of your own ignorance to comply with requirements set by the Companies Act.
Say you bid for a contract you know will pay well and with good recommendations from satisfied customers from your last two contracts, you know that you can easily win these one.
However your potential client does a back ground check on your records with IPA and unfortunately finds out that your company was recently deregistered for non-compliance under the Act and so the contract is given to another bidder. Now how could this happen?
A lot of PNG companies - especially those registered by individuals or a group of individuals, who rush into doing so without understanding the consequences or obligations of managing or owning a company - do not even know that they are supposed to be submitting company annual returns or they ignore the importance of submitting company annual returns with the office of the Registrar of Companies simply because of a common misconception that because they were not doing any business activity that they did not have to lodge any company annual returns.
By the way and for your information, a company annual return is not the same thing as a company tax return which you would normally lodged at the office of the Internal Revenue Commission. And even with Tax returns you are required to lodge “Nil Returns” at the IRC office.
What is a company annual return.
All companies registered in PNG are subject to the requirements of the Companies Act 1997 and therefore regardless of whether the company is trading or not trading it is required to lodge a company annual return each calendar year. Failure to comply normally results in the de-registration of the company. A company annual return is prescribed as Form 22 under the Companies Regulation 1998 and usually comprise of 7 pages.
If you did not know that your company is suppose to be lodging annual returns using the prescribed Form 22 every year whether you have done any business activity for that period or not, well I guess now you know.
Now, it is always a good business practice to seek the assistant of professionals to help you in any business matters which you are not sure of, such as completing company annual returns. However with company annual returns if you can learn just a few tips, and this is what this series of post is about, it is easy to complete them yourself.
In the final series of this post I will go into the exact details of completing your first company annual return.Labels: Commerce Regulations, Deregistration