The end of the phased annual return filings

PUBLISHED: 8th May 2019

The Companies (Amendment) Act 2019 was signed into law on 11 April 2019 with its only purpose being to amend section 343 of the Companies Act 2014 (the “2014 Act”) with respect to the time periods allowed for filing a company’s annual return.

Previous legislation dictated that a company must file its annual return together with its financial statements with the CRO within 28 days of its annual return date. However, where an annual return was filed electronically, an additional allowance of 28 days was granted to actually deliver the financial statements to the CRO.

As electronic filing of the annual return has been mandatory for a number of years, this section of the 2014 Act essentially became redundant.

Pursuant to this new piece of legislation, companies will now have a straight 56 day period after their annual return date to file both their annual return and financial statements electronically.

If you have any questions on how this new legislation affects your compliance requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us.