Liquidation, Strike-Off, & Redundancy issue

Don't know if anyone can help me here and there's a bit of a rant thrown in but anyway:

Company A is broke, no money at all and the directors have been keeping it alive for the last 2-3 years from personal funds.

The company has to close eventually but all debts are paid, thanks to the directors personal inputs.

However, the company has a couple of employees and the company cannot afford to pay them their statutory redundancy so they apply to the Social Insurance fund to pay the redundancy

The SIF pays the redundancy and then the Dept of Jobs, Enterprise etc writes to the company looking for 40% of the redundancy paid out.

After explaining to the Dept that the company has no money and showing them the Balance Sheet with no assets and just a directors loan as a liability, the Dept says that it is their policy to not write off the 40% claim

So now the company cannot go for voluntary strike-off because the directors cannot sign a declaration stating that the company has no assets or liabilities. Instead the only option is an expensive liquidation procedure, purely as a result of one government creditor who refuses to write-off the amount they are owed despite the glaringly obvious fact that they will get nothing through the liquidation process anyway.

Surely there is some way around this?

deleted

Hi

You need a creditors voluntary liquidation if the company is insolvant. There is no other way out of this.

If you sign the statement of solvancy and it turns out that you were in fact insolvant then you could be prosecuted by the ODCE and disqualified from acting as a director.

You need proper professional advise on this from a firm that is experienced in liquidations.

Kind Regards

capnhand

DB74 -I can tell you that in my profession in the last few years lots of travel agencies have just shut up shop, owing money to all and sundry including Revenue and the Dept of Enterprise . None of them went through liquidation.

I gather this is also the case with thousands of other small companies in Ireland.

If the company genuinely has no money and there was no naughty behaviour or gross negligence then you will find (unless things have dramatically changed in the last year since I left the business) then the company is usually not bothered by creditors.

In your case there are no creditors -except govnt.
Well then, let the govnt liquidate your company.They won't bother. They may huff and puff but if you've acted honestly in your business then there's nothing they can do.
Talking to an accountant is an expence that serves no purpose.

(A bit off-topic though a slight mirror image of your situation . Also a rant....
I closed my travel agency a year ago. Paid all debts, redundancy, Revenue etc. Not one cent owing to anyone. The only problem was the company had a lease on the shop that I have only just got out of. This was my only liability,now gone.

So now I want to liquidate my company(members voluntary liquidation) so I can get my hands on my own money -well over 100k which is what i put in years ago.
If I just write a cheque to myself that is regarding as income on which i pay tax.
I can't take out my own money unless I offically liquidate even though I owe nothing and the final auditors accounts show this to be the case.
It's red-tape B.S. similar to DB's situation. Except DB has no reason to do anything more than he has done.

I asked a few liquidators if they could just do the simple paperwork involved -the lowest quote I got was over 2.500k. For just a few hours work filling out forms.
So instead I'm doing it myself just using a friends name .
Anyone, other than a servant of the company, can be a liquidator.

Doubtless, liquidators will disagree with all the above.