Horrified : every UK company balance sheet one-click away !

[Clare@InTouch]

If I decide to hire a builder to build the extension to my house, I want to be sure he's not going to do a bunk with my money. To get reassurance, I can download his accounts and see his balance sheet, which gives me a snapshot of his business. If he has bank overdraft and no assets, I'm not going to give him a deposit!

That's what I expect of a genuine business, and I fail to see how it's a bad thing.

If you don't want your balance sheet to be public then go umbrella, or self employed. You will pay more tax, but that's the trade off.

[DannyR]

I have no problem with a client / agency requesting company financial information to check if there isn't anything dodgy.

I have a problem for example with giving away my real name to a date, that date googling my real name then immediately (without even having to pay for it) know that I have lot of cash and then that date thinking "Oh this person has lot of cash, let's make the most out of him / her".

Or having a landlord doing the same and thinking "Oh this tenant has lot of cash, he / she won't mind if I increase his / her rent by 20% next time."

Or trying to monetize a digital product on my company website using a donation or freemium business model and having customers think : "this person has already lot of cash, no need to send him / her money for his / her product." Or having competitors thinking : "Wow this person is making lot of cash with his / her digital product, let's clone it."

I could give you hundreds of examples more or less trivial / penalising / dangerous.

I'm usually a very friendly person but I hate to be taken advantage of, penalised or being swindled. And having such info so easily available for everybody is the door open to all of this. Call it paranoid if you want but it does not prevent me to have lot of friends and to make friends easily and trust people that I know well so I would not call it a "Personality Disorder".

[SunnyInHades]

Just checked out the final net worth of an infamous voice-2-text message company (voicemail translated and re-typed by humans listening to wav email attachments) ...

Net Worth : £-44,497,000

Ouch ! No hiding anymore from companycheck.co.uk

[SueEllen]

I have no problem with a client / agency requesting company financial information to check if there isn't anything dodgy.

I have a problem for example with giving away my real name to a date, that date googling my real name then immediately (without even having to pay for it) know that I have lot of cash and then that date thinking "Oh this person has lot of cash, let's make the most out of him / her".

You forget that you and the company you run are separate legal entities.

No-one, apart from HMRC and unless you tell them, knows exactly how many employees you have.

Years ago I worked for a company A who took over a company B who mislead them about how many employees they had Company A saw that company B had a very healthy balance sheet and saw lots of employees in their two offices.

Unfortunately they didn't actually ask company B how many of these employees where permanent employees. So instead of the 25 people they thought company B employed there were only 3 permanent employees.

Or having a landlord doing the same and thinking "Oh this tenant has lot of cash, he / she won't mind if I increase his / her rent by 20% next time."

To most normal people a business is more than one person. So you just need to casually mention your "employees" to the nosey landlord.

Or trying to monetize a digital product on my company website using a donation or freemium business model and having customers think : "this person has already lot of cash, no need to send him / her money for his / her product." Or having competitors thinking : "Wow this person is making lot of cash with his / her digital product, let's clone it."

People who are going to rip you of or not pay will do that regardless of your business model.

I could give you hundreds of examples more or less trivial / penalising / dangerous.

Your examples are all silly so thank you for not giving us anymore.

Your main issue is that anyone you have a relationship with will find out that you only employ yourself.

[DannyR]

Just checked out the final net worth of an infamous voice-2-text message company

Googling : [44,497,000 company check] was enough to get me the name of the "infamous" company (and all its info) !

@SueEllen :

Regarding the takeover you are mentioning, all the infos / conditions required should have be written down on a contract which would have invalidated the deal if the infos / conditions were not met. This has to do with contractual laws, not privacy.

I don't want to have to lie about having employees or not, or having to lie about anything. To a question that I don't want to answer I just want to be able to say "it's not your business" (obviously only if there is no contractual relationship involved where the information required is part of concluding the deal).

People who are going to rip you of or not pay will do that regardless of your business model.

When your business model is donation / pay what you want / pay what you can / freemium / etc... the notion of "ripping off" is not as clear cut. Some people might partly base their decision to donate on the perception of how wealthy or not is the provider of the digital product.

Your examples are all silly so thank you for not giving us anymore.

That's not a nice thing to say.

Your main issue is that anyone you have a relationship with will find out that you only employ yourself.

??? I'm happy for anybody to know that I employ myself and I have no employee other than myself. I'm not happy about anybody knowing my name and that I am self-employed being able to also know my company net worth. (But I repeat : I am happy to give this information to whoever I sign a contract with which involves my company).

[SueEllen]

??? I'm happy for anybody to know that I employ myself and I have no employee other than myself. I'm not happy about anybody knowing my name and that I am self-employed being able to also know my company net worth. (But I repeat : I am happy to give this information to whoever I sign a contract with which involves my company).

You simply don't get it -

THE COMPANY IS NOT EQUAL TO YOU.

If you don't understand that simple point you are heading for trouble.

[DannyR]

You simply don't get it -
THE COMPANY IS NOT EQUAL TO YOU.

Thank you, I know that, it's not my point.

My point is if I'm saying to someone : "my name is blablabla blobloblo, I'm a consultant / developer / plumber / artist / contractor / self-employed / whatever...", if they google "blablabla blobloblo" they can know straight away the wealth belonging to me which is kept in my ltd.

If I'm wrong please explain to me why in more details.

[northernladuk]

Thank you, I know that, it's not my point.

My point is if I'm saying to someone : "my name is blablabla blobloblo, I'm a consultant / developer / plumber / artist / contractor / self-employed / whatever...", if they google "blablabla blobloblo" they can know straight away the wealth belonging to me which is kept in my ltd.

If I'm wrong please explain to me why in more details.

a) You are not wrong
b) It is how it is for every single company in the UK and I would imagine most countries
c) Stop ******* moaning. It is how it is. If you don't like it **** off somewhere else.

You want to moan at the companies that show this info on the web not us. You are boring now.

[realityhack]

Cease.