The new ASIC national business name register has commenced (check it out here).
If you are a business name owner you should do a free search now to check that your business name has been transferred and to see if there are identical business names registered in different states and territories, by you or different people.
If you own identical names in multiple states you should get advice on a strategy to reduce the number of registrations to simplify your administration and fees.
According to ASIC, approximately 1.6 million business names have been transferred to the new register from the 8 current state and territory registers.
ASIC ‘s register may contain different information than previous state and territory registers. For example:
- ASIC will not collect or display details of all of the trading places for a business name. It will show one principal place of business, and a service address, and
- Some states and territories only permitted legal entities to hold a business name, whereas ASIC will allow unincorporated entities that are entitled to hold an ABN, including partnerships, trusts and joint ventures.
Some data transferred to ASIC was of poor quality or missing and may not appear in its register, or may appear in an unexpected fashion. For example, there are some missing dates and address fields, and some data has been notionally assigned by ASIC.
