Dramatic rise in registrations at Companies House

Dramatic rise in registrations at Companies House

Massive increase in registered companies attributed to tax law loophole

Tax law changes that allow managers to register companies themselves have
led to a massive 449,000 companies being registered at Companies House.

The latest annual report shows that the new registrants occurred at the
beginning of the year but tapered by April.

UK company registrations soared due to impending tighter regulation of the
tax rules concerning managed service companies.

Workers operating within managed service companies (MSCs), who stood to
benefit from lower tax bills, moved to incorporate into their own business as a
response to former chancellor Gordon Brown’s promise to crackdown on tax
avoidance after last December’s pre-Budget report.

A Companies House spokesman said there were no expectations of the same high
increase in numbers next year.

The report also shows that public record information of companies had been
accessed more than three and a half million times – another indication of the
significant growth in company numbers and the workload of Companies House.

Companies House was hit with a scandalous case of
malicious filings in July last year, which led police to
investigate false accounts filed with the intention of damaging businesses.

Gareth Jones, registrar and chief
executive at Companies House, said: ‘We’ve been working hard to make it easier
and more secure for companies to transact their business with us. We can now
accept electronically more than 80% of the documents we expect to be filed, and
our electronic filing systems have security measures built in to help companies
protect themselves against fraud.’

Further reading:

Taxman hesitates over IR35 quandary

Tax crackdown on MSCs boosts company registrations

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