Helped to wind up representative office of foreign company in Ukraine

At the beginning of 2017, our company was contacted by a Swiss firm that wanted to liquidate its representative office in Kyiv. The Client wanted to complete the procedure as quickly as possible. Drawing on extensive experience in this area, our lawyers immediately started to develop the necessary package of documents.

One of the most important documents is the decision of the parent company to liquidate the representative office and to appoint the person responsible for this procedure. This person is usually the head of the representative office, who is entitled to delegate his/her functions under the liquidation procedure to third parties, i.e. to our employees. In this case, we do not need to get a power of attorney from the parent company. In Ukraine, this document is granted by the head of the representative office.

The Client has promptly provided us with all the required documents: the Certificate of the representative office registration (original copy); the Certificate verifying the registration of taxpayer (Form № 4-OPP); the signed decision of the parent company on closure of the representative office (the text is provided by our lawyers), etc.

The next step was to submit the documents to the competent authorities and to undergo an audit.

The most significant delays usually occur during the tax audit conducted by the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. The procedure can take from one to five years. This always surprises the clients, but unfortunately, it’s a sad fact - the audit can be much delayed, despite the statutory time limits.

Our lawyers have a proven algorithm for assigning a tax audit to a representative office or company, so we can guarantee our clients that such delay will not exceed three months.

This is exactly what happened in that case, the tax audit was assigned within a week.

Based on the results of the audit, the Tax Service makes up an electronic checklist to be signed by several inspectors. Some delays may also occur during this procedure. One of the inspectors audited the Client, but took vacation without having signed the checklist. However, we have the solution to such non-standard tasks.

Shortly before this case, our layers have just helped to liquidate another foreign company representative office with a similar problem. Read more here.

Thus, the fiscal audit was completed and one of the most important documents (Form 12-OPP) was signed within the reasonable period of time for the Client.

During the tax audit, our lawyers had been working on obtaining a Customs De-registration Certificate. This saved us time and accelerated progress towards our goal. Thus, it has taken us a month to receive two documents, which are indispensable to closing a foreign company representative office in Ukraine.

The final stage of the procedure was to obtain certificates verifying the liquidation of the foreign company representative office in the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and State statistics authorities. In general, the documents review by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade takes a month, but our specialists managed to complete the procedure in three weeks. In just one day, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine provided us with an extract of the representative office deregistration from all state registers, which we promptly sent to our Client.

If you are interested in a foreign company representative office liquidation, please contact our company. Read more about the cost and terms of the representative office liquidation here.