Since the introduction of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) in December 2012 we often receive queries from confused clients on their reporting obligations to other regulators.
This is particularly the case for charitable companies limited by guarantee, often made worse by the tiered ACNC financial reporting requirements.
A company limited by guarantee is a legal structure that you may choose for your charity and must be first registered by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
Once ASIC registered you can choose to apply to the ACNC to be registered as a charity. If the registration is accepted most ongoing reporting obligations are to the ACNC.
It should be noted that, despite to name, the ACNC only deals with charities and not all not-for-profit organisations.
If you are a company limited by guarantee that has been registered with the ACNC you are no longer required to report to ASIC the following:
- Changes to the company’s constitution.
- Changes to the company’s address details, including registered office address, principal place of business address or contact address. You can choose to notify ASIC of these changes.
- Appointment, resignation or retirement of directors, secretaries and alternate directors or submit personal details of directors and secretaries. You can choose to notify ASIC of these changes.
- A company will note be sent an annual statement each year and will not have to review their details or pay the annual review fee (subject to timing of the registration).
Do will need to notify ASIC if any of the following occur:
- Change the name of your company
- Your auditor resigns or is removed
- An external administrator is appointed to your company
- You wind up of deregister the company
As some of the reporting requirements are optional there is a mismatch in the company information maintained by ASIC and the ACNC.
Many companies have different reporting requirement depending on their structure, size and registrations. Please contact our office if you have any questions regarding the reporting obligations of your organisations.
