Using a Registered Office Service

Rather, many small businesses are service providers, often using the internet or mail order and never needing a space in which to meet clients. Even those which do require some physical space – for example a counselling or tutoring business – can often be run from home. But an unofficial, unregistered business address could get its holder into serious difficulties – or even legal trouble. Even if you don’t need an office for your day-to-day work, it’s worth using a registered office service to deal with business and legal correspondence.

Since the law came into force requiring all companies registered in England and Wales to have a registered business address in one of those countries, a number of options have opened up for businesses, perhaps the most important being the creation of registered office services. The law was designed to restrict businesses who wish to operate and provide a service within England and Wales, but to evade heavy taxation by running the business from a location in another country. Sometimes these other countries are ‘tax havens’ and save the business a lot of money; sometimes they are just cheaper to employ people in, or are the home countries of the business owner who does not want to move to the UK.

In any case, businesses which operate from abroad have a particular need for a registered office service within England and Wales, as the Inland Revenue are more likely to investigate their affairs. In addition, if you are running a business from another country, you won’t be in the UK very much to check how your office service is running – so there’s no point leaving the provision of this service to amateurs. You can only ensure full compliance with the law by using a professional and reputable provider of such services, which will tick all the legal boxes on your behalf and in your absence. Failure to comply with government regulations on a small element of the registry requirements can lead to heavy penalties, prosecution, and in some extreme cases, the dismantling of your company in the UK.

But these are not only for international companies; they are also invaluable for the small businessperson who doesn’t have or require an office for his/her business, but still needs to comply with registration law. Most people working for themselves do not have a lot of spare time, and a registered office service can take the problems of administration of an office out of their hands, giving you one less thing you need to worry about.

A good registered office service should offer to take care of all aspects of office administration. These include the responsibilities of informing the necessary authorities about the registration, filling in all the necessary forms and having them legally checked – so that from the outset there are no niggling tasks related to the office left for the business owner to carry out.

Day to day, the service will sign for mail (such as registered post and deliveries), and forward your post. This forwarding service will usually be done electronically, i.e. to your email address, in order to keep costs down, but many registered office services also involve physical forwarding of post. In addition, the service will display your company name, lending it legitimacy and reputation; because these services usually use only one or two addresses for all clients, representatives of many companies will be visiting the building, and your name displayed there equates to free advertising!

So if you run a company, however big or small, make sure that your office registration is in order – and if you find the whole thing too much of a headache, consider a registered office service to bring you peace of mind.

For more about registered office services visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_office.