At the end of March and June respectively, the deadline for filing the 2020 accounts expired. However, all obligations relating to the financial statements do not end within this period. The company has a few more operations to do this year.
Disclosure of financial statements
After the preparation of the financial statements, limited liability companies and joint-stock companies are obliged to submit their financial statements electronically to the tax office. By filing the financial statements with the tax office, the company also fulfils its legal obligation to post the financial statements in the register of financial statements. In fact, the tax office automatically sends the financial statements for publication in the register of financial statements.
Approval of financial statements
Companies may file financial statements as approved or not approved. Where the financial statements have been filed as unapproved, limited liability companies and public limited liability companies are obliged to submit the financial statements to the general meeting for approval, so that the general meeting can approve them within 12 months of the date on which the financial statements are drawn up. For the 2020 accounts, it must be approved by the General Meeting by the end of December 2021.
An example of our accounting practice:
The obligations we provide are regulated by the Accounting Act and the Commercial Code. In the context of carrying out a tax audit, the tax office may also examine the fulfilment of those obligations. In practice, there were situations where the tax office found no error in the performance of the tax audit in terms of the calculation of the tax liability, so it focused on the fulfilment of administrative obligations and, in the event of a failure to fulfil its obligation to approve the accounts, completed the tax audit with a fine of EUR 100.
Notification of approval of financial statements
After filing unapproved financial statements and then approving them by the general meeting, companies do not file financial statements with the tax office again, but only within 15 working days from the date of approval of the financial statements, they shall notify the tax office of that date. The tax office then forwards the notification of the approval of the financial statements to the Register of Financial Statements for publication.
How to make a profit or a loss
The approval of the financial statements is also linked to the decision of the shareholders or shareholders how to report on the economic result of the preceding year. In the case of recognised profits, limited liability companies and public limited liability companies are first obliged to create or replenish a legal reserve, up to the amount specified in the social contract, but up to at least 10 % and 20 % respectively of the capital.
Once a legal reserve has been created or replenished, the shareholders or shareholders may decide to pay the profits or may use the profit to cover losses of previous years, or use it to increase the capital or create other funds. A frequent choice of shareholders or shareholders is to transfer them to an account of retained earnings or outstanding losses of previous years in the event of a profit or loss.
Approval of accounts and publication in the register of accounts
The final price for the service is 50€.
Beware of profit disbursement
Members and shareholders must also take into account, when deciding to pay profits, that their company does not go bankrupt by disbursing profits or that the value of their company's equity by the payment of profits is not less than the value of the share capital together with the reserve fund. At the same time, they can only pay out that part of the profit that exceeds the unpaid losses of the past.
