The Companies Registration Office (CRO) has been improving their Companies Office Registration Environment (CORE) system for the last few years.
The new system will allow the uploading of wet signature documents without having to submit a hardcopy to the CRO.
Legislation to facilitate the 56 day timeline for filing B1 Annual Returns is effective from December 16, 2020. This means that the current system of compiling an Annual Return 28 days after its Annual Return Date (ARD) to gain a further 28 days will no longer apply.
The accompanying Financial Statements to an Annual Return must now be uploaded before a company can generate and upload the signature page to the Annual Return.
Timeline
The CRO have announced the following timeline:
7 December 2020 – Cut Off Date for the receipt of any wet signature pages compiled but not yet returned.
10 December 2020 – Cut Off Date for electronically signed forms C1/C1A/C1B/F8/F8A/F8Bs.
11 December 2020 – CRO will begin transition so the CRO office will be closed.
16 December 2020 – CORE 2.0 will be operational.
Urgent Action
Any documents, compiled on CORE, which are still awaiting signature and delivery to the CRO need to be received by them before 7 December. So please return them now if applicable.
If this December 7 deadline is not met, the outstanding forms will need to be regenerated and filed on CORE 2.0 on or after December 16 so unnecessary additional fees will be incurred.