Who 'owns' the Company

castle96

Online ? Link? nothing on the "filing" bit of that Coys records/docs 1994 est.

Flobberchops

AnotherJoe wrote: »

"Get the F out "

Very droll. In other news, Abcde will be cheered to learn she's a shareholder:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/30/us/abcde-southwest-apologizes-scli-intl/index.html

castle96

always a helpful contributor that pops up !

polymaff

Family members receiving dividend income has, surely, always been a tactic for reducing overall taxation of dividends?

masonic

Flobberchops wrote: »

Very droll. In other news, Abcde will be cheered to learn she's a shareholder:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/30/us/abcde-southwest-apologizes-scli-intl/index.html

No surprise she tells her story to ABC news.

steampowered

There's nothing unusual about this.

The shareholders of a company and the board of directors of a company are completely different concepts.

Almost all decisions are taken by the board of directors. Not by the shareholders. The directors are responsible for managing the company.

There aren't many things the shareholders get to vote on.

Thrugelmir

castle96 wrote: »

Online ? Link? nothing on the "filing" bit of that Coys records/docs 1994 est.

Suggest that one of the shareholders contacts the Company Secretary. As there's the right to inspect certain documents. Not least the records of resolutions and minutes of records of general meetings.

Tom99

What is the relationship of D&E to FABC? They were presumably not chosen at random.
Does the company pay a dividend?

Raggie

Not all share types are the same..



Are different types of shares held?

Malthusian

castle96 wrote: »

D & E have just (?!) found out that they are shareholders (surely they would have to sign 'something'?

Nope. You don't have to sign anything to receive a gift. Companies House needs to be periodically updated with the list of shareholders but the shareholders don't have to sign anything there either.

However you have to do something to make a gift to somebody else, even if it's only verbal. If you just think in your own head "These shares are now D and E's" nothing has happened.

If you filed confirmation statements saying that D and E were shareholders, and D and E only later find out about this gift (and genuinely hadn't been told, i.e. not forgotten), then D and E essentially have two options.

1) Go along with it, in case they now really were shareholders all along (there is no evidence to say otherwise).

2) Say that the gift never happened. ABC&F are now liable for filing false confirmation statements and should correct the position with Companies House before they dig themselves into a deeper hole.

I'm assuming that the company has never paid dividends in all this time. If it did then D & E should have been getting dividends (assuming that their class of shares was entitled to them, as per Raggie) and potentially paying tax on them.

polymaff wrote: »

Family members receiving dividend income has, surely, always been a tactic for reducing overall taxation of dividends?

A spouse, definitely. Or maybe as part of Inheritance Tax planning. (But trading businesses benefit from Business Relief so there is no need to give shares in a BR-eligible company to a child to avoid IHT.) If the family member is not a spouse it can't be a tax planning strategy because giving away 100% of the income to a child to avoid 7.5% in tax makes no sense.

If you are expecting them to give you the money back to you, having not paid tax, this is a highly risky and possibly illegal strategy. (The main risk is that they don't give the money back, meaning you have forfeited 100% of the money to try and avoid e.g. 7.5% in tax. This risk doesn't exist with spouses.)

If you genuinely want them to have the money it's a gift, not tax planning.