Deregistering a French company
The “Radiation” of a company effectively refers to “deregistration”. It is the third final phase of closing a company, after dissolution and liquidation. It’s only through radiation that you can have the name of your company taken off the Commerce and Companies Register. In other words, it’s the only way to completely delete your company.
When is a company radiated?
There are two types of radiation:
- Radiation through a normal procedure. This is the one you’ll go through if you want to close your company.
- The automatic radiation. This only happens when the administration decides to radiate your company, because the owner of a sole proprietorship is deceased, or because 3 years have passed since the dissolution of the company.
What’s the radiation procedure?
The first thing you should know is that you can only do this if you’ve already liquidated your company. Then, your company also needs to have stopped all commercial activity. Once that’s done, you have 30 days to file a radiation demand to the CFE (Companies Formalities Center), which needs to contain the following documents:
- A liquidation certificate
- A copy of the final balance sheet of your company, certified by the liquidator
- The M4 form, filled in (you can find it online)
- A certificate that you published a notice in a Legal Announcement Journal
Overall, this costs about 15€.
Keep in mind that, on top of this, you also need to file a statement to the tax authorities.
What comes next?
Once a company’s been radiated, it effectively doesn’t exist anymore. However, it’s possible that some debts were still left unaccounted for.
Thankfully, this should be planned for in the liquidation phase. Indeed, the liquidator should have defined a Judicial Representative of the company. Whether the company is indebted or has debt to collect, they will be the one who will be liable from now on.
