The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has been initiating various steps to identify companies which are registered under the Companies Act but are not performing any business activities. One of those, was the action taken by the authorities to strike-off names of lakhs of Companies from the official records for not carrying out business activities which also resulted in directors disqualification. The present move of Active Tagging Of Companies with geo-tagging are all aimed at tracking the shell companies and cracking them down thereby tightening the regulatory system.
Requirement for filing e-Form ACTIVE:
Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has vide its notification dated 21st February, 2019 mandated all companies to undertake Active Company Tagging Identities and Verification (ACTIVE) through a new e-form viz. INC-22A
Applicability:
Every Company incorporated on or before 31st December, 2017 shall mandatorily file all the particulars of the Company, its registered office and other details in form INC-22A on or before 25th April 2019.
Except:
- Companies who are struck off or under the process of Striking Off.
- Under liquidation or amalgamated or dissolved.
Pre-requisites for filing e-form INC-22A:
- Company should have completed its Annual Fillings (Form AOC-4 and MGT-7) until FY 2017-18;
- Companies with a paid-up capital of Rs. 5 Crore or more must have a Company Secretary on Board before filing INC- 22A;
- The status of the DIN allotted to the directors of the company should be active i.e., directors should have filed their DIR-3 KYC.
Consequences of non-compliance:
- Late fee of Rs.10,000/- will be levied if the form is filed after 25th April 2019.
- The Status of the Company will be changed to “ACTIVE non -Compliant”.
- Action u/s 12(9) might be initiated i.e., if the registrar has reason to believe on physical verification that the company is not carrying on business, it may remove the name of the company (strike-off) from the register.
- The Company will not be able to undertake the below mentioned event-based filings:
- SH-7 (Increase in authorized share capital),
- PAS-3 (Allotment of securities),
- INC-22 (Change of registered office),
- DIR-12 (Appointment and change in designation of Directors/KMP. Cessation will be allowed)
- INC-28 (Notice of the order of court or any other competent authority)
Information required for Filing INC-22A :
- Official email id of the company as the OTP (One -time password) will be generated;
- Latitude and Longitude of the registered office of the Company;
- Details of the Statutory Auditor, Director, KMP, Cost Auditors (if any) of the Company;
- SRN of Annual Filing form (Form AOC-4 and MGT-7) for F.Y. 2017-2018.
- Photograph of registered office showing external building and inside office also showing therein at least One director/KMP who has affixed his/her digital signature to the e-form.
Please note that as per Sec. 12 of Companies Act, 2013, name of the company and the address of registered office shall be painted or affixed outside the registered office of the company in English and in a local language in a conspicuous manner in legible characters.
Also, the GST Registration no. should be displayed outside office of the company.
Please do reach out to us with the necessary information in order to ensure timely compliance.