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

[cojak]

What route did you end up taking royalfirespirit and did you get your money back pls?

This thread was created in 2012. Royalfirespirit has not been back on this forum since.

[Mark14]

What route did you end up taking royalfirespirit and did you get your money back pls?

FWIW the cheapest company restoration service I've found is Company Formations, Company Restoration, Company Support - Apex Company Services. They charge £340 + VAT for a court restoration, which, with the court and treasury solicitor's fees totals around £870. They are not solicitors, I'm not entirely clear whether that makes a substantial difference. (Anyone know?)

As far as I can tell, going to a solicitor that specializes in court restoration will generally bump the total fee to the £1000-£1200 range..

What route did you end up taking royalfirespirit and did you get your money back pls?

[ASB]

I have a client in the recruitment industry and she was working in the UK and had a company with a boyfriend both of them Directors. When she moved back to New Zealand she signed the company dissolution forms and accounts and left it with the other Director ex boyfriend in good faith that he would forward to Companies house, HMRC etc and split the remaining £2k. She did not hear again.She chased him a few times but could not locate him.

Two years on she wants to return to the UK and has been advised by a friend at the previous address that an old letter received stated that the company had been dissolved by companies house due no accounts for returns filed and that the bank had also closed the account and the £2k had been sent to Bona Vacantia division. She strongly suspects that no accounts or registration ever occurred for the company.

She wishes to return for work to the UK and is worried that if she flies to the UK before this is sorted out she will get arrested or something similar upon arrival. Would this be a criminal offence either with HMRC or Companies house etc ? Is there anyway to find out if this matter has escalated? As far as she can tell no further correspondence has been received at the companies registered address.

Any advice appreciate.

Ring companies house. She has (arguably) failed in her duties as director. She should have resigned directorship.

If the company has been struck off then HMRC have approved it, so basically they can go swivel.

[BlasterBates]

Is it just me or does this discussion remind anyone else of the Monty Python parrot sketch.

[GICOUR]

Company struck off - Bona Vacantia

I have a client in the recruitment industry and she was working in the UK and had a company with a boyfriend both of them Directors. When she moved back to New Zealand she signed the company dissolution forms and accounts and left it with the other Director ex boyfriend in good faith that he would forward to Companies house, HMRC etc and split the remaining £2k. She did not hear again.She chased him a few times but could not locate him.

Two years on she wants to return to the UK and has been advised by a friend at the previous address that an old letter received stated that the company had been dissolved by companies house due no accounts for returns filed and that the bank had also closed the account and the £2k had been sent to Bona Vacantia division. She strongly suspects that no accounts or registration ever occurred for the company.

She wishes to return for work to the UK and is worried that if she flies to the UK before this is sorted out she will get arrested or something similar upon arrival. Would this be a criminal offence either with HMRC or Companies house etc ? Is there anyway to find out if this matter has escalated? As far as she can tell no further correspondence has been received at the companies registered address.

Any advice appreciate.

[royalfirespirit]

FWIW the cheapest company restoration service I've found is Company Formations, Company Restoration, Company Support - Apex Company Services. They charge £340 + VAT for a court restoration, which, with the court and treasury solicitor's fees totals around £870. They are not solicitors, I'm not entirely clear whether that makes a substantial difference. (Anyone know?)

As far as I can tell, going to a solicitor that specializes in court restoration will generally bump the total fee to the £1000-£1200 range..

[royalfirespirit]

OK fair enough, but this seems to be the case now:
BVC14 restoring a company £69
(BVC14) Administrative Restoration > Dissolved Company Guidelines > Bona Vacantia

RT01 - Administrative Restoration of a company £100
Guidance - strike off, dissolution and restoration (GP4)

I can't see anything else there. Once the BV is accepted and the restoration is done, the bank can release the funds.

Or have I massively mis-understood?

My understanding is that administrative restoration is not possible if the company was struck off at its own request (as was the case for me).

[The Spartan]

I guess they simplified the process because too many people were making the same mistake

[tractor]

..

OK fair enough, but this seems to be the case now:
BVC14 restoring a company £69
(BVC14) Administrative Restoration > Dissolved Company Guidelines > Bona Vacantia

RT01 - Administrative Restoration of a company £100
Guidance - strike off, dissolution and restoration (GP4)

I can't see anything else there. Once the BV is accepted and the restoration is done, the bank can release the funds.

Or have I massively mis-understood?

There is a bit of a disconnect here and I can't find links anywhere. Once administrative restoration is complete, how do funds/assets find their way back to the company/bank account. There is no reference of this being done automatically on the BV website. If the company bank accounts have been closed, the treasury solicitor would have nowhere to send the funds.

OK, I found the answer - you have to make a further application to BV following the waiver letter and successful restoration. Details here BCV15.

[NickNick]

It was the average people paid when I worked at CH

OK fair enough, but this seems to be the case now:
BVC14 restoring a company £69
(BVC14) Administrative Restoration > Dissolved Company Guidelines > Bona Vacantia

RT01 - Administrative Restoration of a company £100
Guidance - strike off, dissolution and restoration (GP4)

I can't see anything else there. Once the BV is accepted and the restoration is done, the bank can release the funds.

Or have I massively mis-understood?

[The Spartan]

As an earlier poster stated we're only hearing one side of the story, in which case maybe said professional will be culpable for the fees to restore the company. My first job in CH was as a compliance case officer so I've heard it all before it all boils down to as a director it's your responsibility in the end. Sorry if I'm being Swiss, they see everything in black and white here

[d000hg]

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

You mean like engaging a professional to handle this side of things correctly and advise you on the process? That's what he claims to have done, and said professional didn't do what they should.

[The Spartan]

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.

Bit late but parts 3, 7 & 8 Guidance - strike off, dissolution and restoration (GP4)

[The Spartan]

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

It was the average people paid when I worked at CH

[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).