Annual Report - 2012

The Annual Report 2012 for the Companies Registration Office is now available from the Corporate Publications page.

G1/B4 Form

The G1/B4 is a resolution form. The G1/B4 can be filed electronically free of charge,but it must be accompanied by a manual B4 for the submission to proceed. The cost of a manually filed B4 is €15.

Electoral Amendment Political Funding Act 2012

This Act was signed into law on 6/11/2012. One of the provisions of this Act reduces the amount threshold for disclosure of political donations made by a company, society or trade union on an annual return form completed by a company, society or trade union. With effect from 7/11/2013 the threshold for this disclosure has been significantly reduced from €5,079 to €200.

Companies, societies and trade unions making an annual return up to a date on or after7/11/2013 are required to disclose in that return all political donations in excess of €200 in the aggregate which were made by the company, society or trade union, as applicable, during the period covered by the annual return.

Companies, societies and trade unions making an annual return up to 6/11/2013 or earlier are required to disclose in that return all political donations in excess of €5,079 in the aggregate which were made by the company, society or trade union, as applicable, during the period covered by the annual return .

Annual Returns Lost or Delayed in the Postal System

CRO receives regular requests from companies to treat annual returns lost or delayed in the post as received on time.  Section 127 of the Companies Act 1963 places the responsibility for prompt delivery of annual returns to the Registrar of Companies on the companies themselves. Therefore, under the law, the CRO cannot grant any concessions in respect of documents which are not delivered to the Registrar on time as a result of being lost or delayed in the ordinary post.

The only circumstances in which such an application will be considered is where the company can provide independent documentary evidence of having posted or dispatched the documents using a form of time guaranteed service,on a date which, under the guarantee, should have resulted in on-time delivery to the CRO, and where the service requires the collection of a signature as proof of delivery.

There are a number of service providers offering time guaranteed delivery services with proof of delivery. For example, An Post's Express Post service offers a guarantee of next working day delivery and requires a signature to be obtained on delivery. Please note that "certificates of postage" do not meet the criteria of independent documentary evidence of posting using a time guaranteed service.

Checking the Status of your Annual Return Submissions

The CRO has put in place a number of methods by which customers can monitor the status of their annual return filings using CORE - the CRO online registration environment - and the CRO website. (eg if there is an inordinate delay in the status of a document changing to "received" on CORE, this may indicate that they have been lost or delayed in the post).

Customers are asked to use these methods to monitor the status of their filings and if the status does not change to "received" within approximately 10 working days (15 at peak times) of being posted to CRO, they should take appropriate action.

• 1. Company officers can register on CORE - www.CORE.ie - where a "watch" can be set up on a relevant company to check the status of submissions posted or filed on-line. If you are watching a company in CORE, an event will appear in  "My Events" each time a document is received and the status of any document (manual or electronic) changes against a watched company. In addition, an e-mail receipt is sent to the CORE registered user, i.e. the presenter, of all electronically filed documents that are received in the CRO.
• 2. In the "What's New" section of the CRO Website, there is a daily update advising of the date of receipt of annual returns being processed on that day - see  "Whats New" . Customers should avoid contacting CRO about documents delivered after the processing date given on the website as they have not yet been reached by the processing team.
• 3. Also on the CRO website, presenters can look up details of a company in the Company Search facility  -  if the company's NARD has moved on to 2014, it means their 2013 annual return has been received and you can view the list of submissions and their status for free.

Please note that all documents are stamped with the date of delivery to the CRO. If the document is fully compliant, or is corrected within 14 days, the original date of delivery will be recorded as the "received date" when the document is entered onto the Register.