First of all, what is the registered office?
It is a requirement by law that every company registered in the UK must have a registered office address. This must be a real address; with a physical location, and must also be in the UK. PO boxes etc are not permitted.
The reason why these rules apply is because the company's registered office address is the address to which all Companies House letters, HMRC letters and various other official letters and forms are sent and are communicated to the appropriate person. If any person or organisation requests in writing the address of your registered office, or the location where they can inspect your company records, or details of the records that you keep at your registered office, you must respond within five working days.
The registered office does not have to be the address where the company trades or carries out its day to day business activities. Some companies use their formation agent's or accountant’s address as their registered office and this is a service that we can offer at Business Tax Centre. It is the responsibility of the company directors to ensure that their registered office address is effective and is able to deal with all the official notices that are sent to that address. For example, you could receive a legal demand from a creditor and you will need to respond promptly to avoid further action.
Business Tax Centre's service gives you piece of mind...
With our Registered Office Services, you can rest assured that all official mail that we receive on behalf of your company will be redirected to an address of your choice in a careful, prompt and efficient manner.
Our service, which uses our London associates office as your registered office address, can be used for any company type, and is particularly popular with smaller startup companies, such as those with a single director working from home. It is ideal for any company that prefers to have all official paperwork from official sources sent to a separate address other than their private address. The reasons for doing so are varied and dependent on each company's specific circumstances.
As the company's registered office address is a piece of public information, searchable on the public register, many choose to use our registered office service to give the impression that their company is larger if it is seen to exist in a larger business premises than, say, a domestic address.
How much does it cost?
Business Tax Centre's 'Registered Office Service' costs £90+VAT per annum. This is inclusive of any charges for handling Companies House, HMRC and legal documents.
You can choose this service for a new company as part of our online company formation process. Simply choose our service when completing the registered office section of the form. You can also use our service for an existing company too, but we will need to inform Companies House about the change of registered office address. We can do this simply and quickly my importing your company into our Company Manager.
Important Note
The facility is intended solely as an address for service of all routine and special official mail only and must not be used as the principal place of business or trading address or for the collection and forwarding of general mail, (please note we do not offer a trading forwarding address service). Your stationery must not indicate this to be so. The registered address must be included on your business stationery but please do not display our telephone number. Any other or unofficial mail we receive on your behalf may be forwarded at an additional £5 per item cost or returned to sender if junk or instructed to do so.
This service is a regulated activity under the Money Laundering Regulations forming an ongoing business relationship as such we are obligated to identify and verify the identity of those who own and control the company and monitor activity. We may use electronic verification to perform the verification process. Failure to verify any identities may result in the service being withdrawn.
SmartSearch, (we are a certified partner of SmartSearch) is the most powerful anti-money laundering verification service available in the market today.
Unique features include alerts when Sanction, PEP or SIP matches are encountered; also included is ongoing monitoring of all client records against future alerts.
Identity Verification reports, Pay-As-You-Go, no contracts,
Open an account and invoiced on a monthly basis for actual usage with 21 days payment terms.