This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. To find out more about cookies on this website and how to delete cookies, see our Cookie Policy.
Analytics

Tools which collect anonymous data to enable us to see how visitors use our site and how it performs. We use this to improve our products, services and user experience.

Essential

Tools that enable essential services and functionality, including identity verification, service continuity and site security.

Where Taxpayers and Advisers Meet

Accounts after restoration by court order

davidxt
Posts:34
Joined:Mon Feb 23, 2015 4:00 pm
Accounts after restoration by court order

Postby davidxt » Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:26 am

I dissolved my company (single director, handling my freelance self-employed earnings) in 2017 when I retired, but inadvertently left a large sum in a fixed term savings bond which I had accepted a year earlier as return of a director's loan without realising the consequences of the account being under the company's name. This was my error not my accountant's. All accounts were filed and tax due was paid prior to closure. No outstanding debts.

Two years later I declared and paid income tax on the interest from the maturing fixed term account via my personal self-assessment, having forgotten that the money was not legally mine. (HMRC made no comment on the excess submission or personal tax paid. I am not looking to recover that.)

At that time the bank wrote and asked me if I would like to renew, I said yes and signed up for another two years. My company name is the same as my house name in my postal address, which appears when people write to me, and I still did not notice or register the significance of the 'Ltd' after the house name.

As the end of the second term approached the bank noticed that the Ltd company was struck off and of course told me they could not pay it back at term end, and I learned what 'bona vacantia' are. However, they held on to the money while I went through the restoration process.

So I have had to get a court order and restore the company. This has eventually been achieved and all is now well for the money to be returned next month, the only act before the company will be dissolved again according to the undertaking that I have made to the court.

Two questions arise and if anyone has any experience of this I should be grateful of any input:

1 There will be interest earned of I think around £900 for the second term of two years, earned while the company did not exist. I do not want to repeat my error and declare it on Self Assessment. Neither do I want to register for Corporation Tax: the cost of the restoration was £640, far higher than corporation tax on the profit from the interest. I am tempted to do nothing and offer an explanation afterwards if asked, but perhaps it woudl be better to somehow raise the matter with HMRC.

2 When I now look at the company's entry online at Companies House, there are red warnings saying the accounts are due and that confirmation statements are due for the years that the company did not exist. This is logical since after restoration the company is deemed to exist as if it had never been dissolved, so one can see why the system would see filings to be missing. Nevertheless there cannot be accounts for a non-existent corporate entity. Again I am tempted to ignore this until asked but perhaps again I should do something, but what?

Please resist the temptation to comment on my stupidly in how all of this arose - I have sufficiently learned my lesson believe me. But any advice on the treatment of the interest and what to do about CH filings for intervening years would be welcome.

Return to “Company Taxation”