Streamlined Company Registration
36.The current process to establish a new company in the UK is fragmented and involves providing several Departments and Agencies with different levels of information about the business in order to obtain all of the necessary permissions and licences to trade.
37.Over recent years there has been considerable discussion as to whether it is possible to provide what has been colloquially termed ‘one click registration’ or ‘tell us once’ to aid the process of company incorporation at Companies House and registration for tax purposes at HMRC by means of supplying a set of data on a single occasion.
38.This will form a part of the on-going strategic package of better regulation by keeping unnecessary regulatory burdens on business to a minimum, specifically making life easier for persons setting up a company to fulfil their legal obligations by simplifying the process of incorporating and getting registered for tax by ensuring a person can provide data once and in digital form only.
39.This Part contains provisions which will:
impose a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that the first phase of a solution to create a more streamlined company registration process is delivered by the end of May 2017; and
commit the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on progress made towards achieving the target and, in the final report in March 2017, to include an assessment of what steps, if any, the Secretary of State expects to take to extend the solution.
