My Company Struck Off - Bank Account Balance Sent to Companies House

[royalfirespirit]

Solicitors in London and Nottingham specialising in company restoration,corporate insolvency defence and commercial dispute solutions

£595 + VAT looks like a bargain!

Thanks! Worth pointing out though that the website says "For standard company restorations our guaranteed legal fees are only £595 plus vat and costs." I'm guessing 'costs' could hide a lot more.

[royalfirespirit]

Agreed, but if you have authorised your accountant and it is they that receive the notification rather than you AND they already failed to point out that you should close your bank account in good time, that notice will largely be irrelevant unfortunately in this and I guess other cases.

As it happens, they did say that I should close the bank account, but they didn't give any indication why, or that there would be any bad consequences if I didn't. They also stated that just because they'd applied for the company to be struck off didn't mean it actually would be - and it was because of that that I assumed it was better to wait before closing the account.

[tractor]

...

As it happens, they did say that I should close the bank account, but they didn't give any indication why, or that there would be any bad consequences if I didn't. They also stated that just because they'd applied for the company to be struck off didn't mean it actually would be - and it was because of that that I assumed it was better to wait before closing the account.

The horse has bolted on this one but I always try to remember Kipling's Elephant's Child...

"I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who."

[Wanderer]

When will people actually get it that if they're running a company it is THEIR responsibility to make sure everything is in order.

Yes, you are exactly right but not all business people fully understand all the ins and outs of accounting so they hire an accountant to deal with this for them. Yes, the director made a cockup but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that an accountant would prevent their client from making a mistake which could potentially cost thousands of pounds....

That is presuming that we have the full story, we only have one side of it of course. Perhaps the accountant did make it crystal clear and royalfirespirit didn't really listen. If I were the accountant then I'd be giving my client a three line whip. Don't file the DS01 if you still have money in your company bank account.

But what's done is done. Now it's time to go back to the accountant and ask them to help sort out the mess and move on.....

[royalfirespirit]

The reason that the bank accounts have to be closed by the bank upon notification by Co House is partly to prevent the company continuing to trade and process revenue that to all intents and purposes will be invisible to HMRC, VAT etc once the striking off is complete.

By itself sounds very reasonable. Of course you wouldn't want a company to be trading in that situation. But that's a wholely different thing than allowing the owner of the company to recover their money from the bank account after striking off. Surely it'd be fairer to close the account to all transactions with the exception of allowing a transfer of the funds to their rightful owner(s).

[royalfirespirit]

When will people actually get it that if they're running a company it is THEIR responsibility to make sure everything is in order.

While I can see what you are saying, I think you have to be reasonable and the regulations have to be reasonable. Sure, if what you mean is that you should have enough understanding of basic maths to be able to work out what your customers owe you and add up your profits, and enough skills to keep a bank account, I wouldn't argue with that. But if what you mean is that even to run the very smallest business, you have to basically train as a lawyer in company law, then that's not reasonable (and if universally applied would basically kill almost all new businesses). I would say that being able to predict what has happened to me definitely falls into the latter camp.

To an accountant it may be clear that the law requires all money in the company bank account to go to the Government, but I don't think that'd be at all obvious or intuitive to a non-accountant - it certainly wasn't to me, and even after reading all the explanations here, I see no sense in what has happened. Indeed, the reverse seems more intuitive: Given that there is always the possibility that Companies House might refuse to strike off a company, it would seem daft to close the account before striking off has happened. Is it really reasonable to expect someone running a small company to know enough about the details of company law to be aware of how counter-intuitive the legal situation actually is? I don't think so.

In my case, my company was not complicated. It existed primarily to receive revenues from technical books I was writing. There were no employees or shareholders (except me), so I think it's intuitively quite clear that (assuming all tax has been paid and there are no creditors, which I'm fairly certain is the case), the money in the company accounts is mine. It seems to me that for the Goverment to simply appropriate that money because the company is no longer trading is - in moral terms - stealing. It may be legal (because obviously the Government writes the rulebook), but morally it is theft, and is odious. If the Government took the money on trust in order to ensure that it was not misused, but then returned it in full to the rightful owners on production of sufficient evidence of their entitlement to it, then I think I could understand that, but that's quite clearly not what is happening here. And - to get back to answering The Spartan's point - I really don't see that it's reasonable to expect a business owner to know that this is what will happen if they don't close their account before a certain time.

[royalfirespirit]

I think you are right, see administrative Restoration, it says "This process does not apply where a company has been struck off the register at their own request under section 652A of the Companies Act"

So what are the options now, out of interest? Or can you go through bonavacantia.gov.uk though I think they only give you back £3,000 max? How much does it cost to get a court order to restore the company?

On some more research, I think you're correct. I had a look at the site and also tried the number that Greg@CapitalCity posted, and that route only gives you £3000. So it looks like my first port of call will be the former accountants to say 'Hey, you should've warned me about this. Why didn't you? You owe me clearing this mess up.' and if that doesn't work to go through a solicitor to do the company restoration thing.

[NickNick]

All notices of companies to be struck off are published in the London Gazette, to restore a company generally you need a court order and it normally costs between 1-2k to restore a company. I used to see this a lot when I worked at CH

Nah, more like £200. Bona vacantia is what? £60, CH fees are £100? Where does the other grand come from?

[Ignis Fatuus]

By itself sounds very reasonable. Of course you wouldn't want a company to be trading in that situation. But that's a wholely different thing than allowing the owner of the company to recover their money from the bank account after striking off. Surely it'd be fairer to close the account to all transactions with the exception of allowing a transfer of the funds to their rightful owner(s).

I hate to be pedantic (I do) but the company doesn't exist any more so it doesn't have an owner.

[royalfirespirit]

I hate to be pedantic (I do) but the company doesn't exist any more so it doesn't have an owner.

But the previous owner of the company (ie. the human being) does still exist, and since that human being is the person who (indirectly) owned the assets all along it doesn't seem a tremendous leap of the imagination to suggest that that person is rightfully still the owner of those assets.

After all it's not like the company was ever *really* able to sign the chequebook or make decisions. It's always human beings who do that, and, if we try to think in terms of real life rather than in legalese, saying the company owns assets is really just a shorthand for saying that the person/people who owned the company owned those assets (albeit indirectly).