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ANNUAL RETURNS - OCTOBER PEAK

There are over 52,700 companies with an annual return date of 30th September and a filing deadline of 29th October. If you are filing an annual return in respect of one of these companies, you are requested to ensure that your correctly completed annual return is delivered to the CRO on-time. The only way of doing this is by iling online. Please allow enough time to carry this out in advance of your specific deadline, including the delivery of the signature page.

PUBLIC HOLIDAYS
NOTE: Where the 28 day filing period expires on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, the 28 day period is extended to the next working day.
The CRO is not open on Public or Bank Holidays.

EFILING IS MANDATORY
Mandatory electronic filing for the submission of an Annual Return and its associated financial statements applies to all Irish companies. https://www.cro.ie/Annual-Return/Filing-an-Annual-Return/FAQ-Mandatory-E-Filing

You may get a warning or error when efiling on CORE. Warnings will not prevent you filing your annual return. The warnings are alerting you to the fact that information provided on the B1 does not match the CRO records.

However, if you receive an error this must be corrected before the annual return can be submitted. You will not be permitted to submit an annual return with errors.

ELECTRONIC PAYMENTS
To facilitate the implementation of PSD2, a European law which came into force recently to make it more secure for consumers to make electronic payments online, CRO had to make changes to our payment page, by adding 6 new fields. We are aware that some Core users have been having difficulties with these new fields and are encountering errors when trying to pay online.

Please ensure that you fill in details in all 6 fields (Address 1, Address 2, City, Postcode, Country and Phone Number) to avoid errors and proceed with payment. The inputting of some special characters into the fields will cause errors and prevent the credit card entry screen from loading, for instance the phone number field does not accept brackets “(“ “)”. Any non-alphabetic/non-numeric characters apart from quotes and hyphens for the addresses should be avoided.

The current CRO online systems tend to work better with the Internet Explorer browser so we would advise customers to use Internet Explorer where possible when e-filing.

If you experience issues e-filing, changing to an alternative web browser may rectify the issue. Also be aware of the high volumes of users accessing the system at the same time and you may need to try again. If this does not resolve the issue, then contact the CRO: Telephone 00 353 (0) 1 804 5200/Lo call 1890 220 226* or eb1@dbei.gov.ie. With regards to electronic filing you can contact the Electronic Filing section on 00 353 (0) 1 804 5355/5374 or email electronic.filing@dbei.gov.ie.

*Note that the rates charged for the use of 1890 (LoCall) numbers may vary among different service providers.

CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS
Companies and Presenters should ensure that they provide the correct email addresses, one that is monitored regularly, to ensure they are alerted when their documents are sent back as they no longer receive a letter or documents by post. Provisions should be put in place that prevent emails from the CRO going to Spam or being blocked.

UPLOAD ACCOUNTS
Once the B1 (Annual Return form) has been filed on CORE within 28 days of the annual return date, the Financial Statements must be uploaded as a single PDF no later than the end of the second 28 days and BEFORE the signature page is delivered to the CRO.

PAYMENT MUST BE MADE ONLINE
The filing fee for an e-B1 is €20. Remember that if you have chosen to pay by credit card, payment will be taken immediately and is NON REFUNDABLE (as we cannot store card details). If you would prefer to pay by customer account, payment will not be deducted from your customer account until the signature page is received and processed. Please see Open a Customer Account Online page.

If an annual return is filed late, late filing penalties apply and, where applicable, the company also loses its entitlement to claim audit exemption in the following two years.

CRO ACCOUNT HOLDERS
CRO Account holders should ensure that there is sufficient money in their account to cover the transaction before submitting their documents.

SIGNATURE PAGES
The B1 form can be signed digitally using a Revenue Online Service (ROS) certificate or can be signed using a signature page. The signature page is available after the B1 form has been submitted electronically and must be printed, signed and delivered to the CRO within 28 days of submitting the form online. Failure to deliver the signature page to the CRO on time can result in late filing penalties and loss of audit exemption. Where a document is delivered to the CRO after its filing deadline for any reason, including as a result of being lost or delayed in the postal system, the law leaves the CRO with no option but to treat it as being late.

Since 1st April 2018, B1’s are automatically rejected where the B1 signature page or overall certificate is not signed, if it has only one signature or where the financial statements have not been uploaded.

 

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