Thanks to Mathew Aitken at Company Formation MadeSimple for this guest post:
The limited company is one of the most popular business structures that we have here in the UK, thanks in part to two things. Firstly, you can form a company with just one person. Secondly, the liability of the people involved in the company is limited (hence limited company). This means that if it were to all go wrong, you’re only liable to pay out the value of any shares that you haven’t paid for.
However, there is a drawback to running your business as a limited company – your information being placed on the public register.
Transparency is a key part of limited companies. Certain information must be shared with the public, it’s the price we pay for the officialness of being registered with Companies House – the UK’s registrar of companies. This inevitably means that as well as having some of your own personal information on the public register (name, date of birth, nationality), there’s also some address information that goes on it too.
Now this is fine for some companies, but not so great if you’re operating from home, as many of you will be. In this post we’re going to look at how you can protect your address from the public register. After all, no one wants any unexpected visitors.
When setting up a limited company Companies House require four addresses; the registered office, the director’s service address, the director’s residential address and the shareholder’s service address
Registered office – The company’s official address. As this would suggest, it is on the public register.
Director’s/Shareholder’s service address – This is the official address for the company’s director/shareholder and is on the public register.
Director’s residential address – The actual residential address for the director. It is not on the public register unless you are also using it as any of the above.
How can you protect your address?
The company does not need to trade from or even be based at any of these addresses as long as mail from Companies House, HMRC or any other governmental body received at the address is forwarded on to the company directors. This is exactly why many people who run as limited companies use their accountant’s address when providing Companies House with their company addresses.
Put simply, the way to keep your private address, private, is to not give it out and use another address (that you have permission to use) instead.
At Company Formation MadeSimple we offer a number of registered office and service address services designed to keep your residential address off the public register. See here for more information.