Everyone who has their own business, once faced with the desire to expand the existing business. A popular way to achieve this is to acquire an existing LLC. This is convenient, since the procedures for registering a new legal entity in this case have already been completed, and this frees up time for many other organizational and equally important issues.
Risks when buying an LLC
At the same time, this type of transaction involves some economic risk. Thus, the counterparty may have arrears in paying for some goods or even tax debts. This situation may arise as a result of transactions without prepayments when calculating VAT. Such problems of the company are not beneficial, since in accordance with the law the debts of the enterprise are transferred to the whole and new owners, regardless of who it originally belonged to. This leads to the question of how to check the LLC on all fronts - and for the existence, and the degree of security of the purchase. This article will tell you about the basic methods of how to check your LLC before buying.
Why check taxes and debts of the counterparty by TIN or other details?
With any transaction planned by the company, a thorough analysis of the proposed business partner by lawyers takes place. Before checking the LLC, it is necessary to verify the stability of the partner’s position, which is confirmed by the collection of all kinds of data on the organization, including data on debts. The collection and analysis of this data allows us to assess the sustainability of an existing business, which will change hands.
According to the information and the available history, which is clarified during these actions, many conclusions can be drawn about how the counterparty conducts business. Here it is important to perform even such trivial actions as checking whether an LLC is registered. Any problems arising from these numerous inspections may be a sign of bad faith. Detection of this unfavorable factor in the early stages will save a lot of time and energy to the relying party and will save from failed transactions and unreasonable monetary losses. There is nothing more important than how to check the activity of an LLC for suspicious transactions.
What debts do I need to check for LLC?
- Tax debts to the budget.
- Extra-budgetary debt. Since the enterprise is an employer, deductions in favor of a pension fund, social and medical insurance fund are a prerequisite for its activity. Often the debt on these items becomes very serious.
- Loan obligation. It is possible that the company has issued an outstanding loan.
- Debt under a civil contract. This is a financial liability retained by the entity in the various past transactions.
- Payments debts. It often happens that an enterprise delays payments to its employees, which also generates debt obligations.
- Judicial debt.
How to find out debt LLC?
This will depend on the type of debt. It is most important to check the most receivable type of debt. This is due to the fact that most enterprises ship goods without prepayments. It is important to consider that the procedure for checking IP in this case is different.
How to check the company LLC for the presence of debts for their various types, is given below.
Tax check
Before checking LLC tax arrears, it is necessary to find out the company TIN. Tax debt is recognized using the TIN, the procedure is quite simple. All you need is access to the Internet and the company TIN. Verification is carried out on the official website of the federal tax service. There, to check the counterparty by TIN, you just need to enter the TIN itself and click on "search".
Further, the site displays all the information on debts of this kind associated with this TIN. The past tax period is covered, in the absence of debts the site gives a message about it. An alarming message will be that with existing debts the company has not provided the necessary reports.
Despite all the convenience of the system implemented on this site, at the moment it is only a test mode aimed at enterprises that have not submitted reports for a year or more.
The site provided an opportunity to compare calculations and budget in both short and detailed forms. At the same time, changes in a certain period are taken into account.
The counterparty's TIN check for debt obligations of this type is carried out through the unified state register of legal entities (USRLE). The USRLE certificate, which is received there, also contains information on tax registration. Using the same document, the identity of the present owner or authorized person is verified. For clarity, a sample of this particular type of help is presented above.
Extrabudgetary Debt
Since the summer of 2017, several methods have emerged to check the LLC for debts of this type. A check for debt to an extrabudgetary fund can be carried out by applying in writing to the tax office, as well as using a specialized electronic reporting service. The tax office has data on existing debts, covering the earliest periods. In cases of disagreement with them, they are checked with the territorial offices of the Pension Fund, the Social Insurance Fund, and the Health Insurance Fund. To verify the insurance payment in the Social Insurance Fund from an accident at work, they contact the fund’s departments immediately.
Credit debts
Before checking an LLC for credit debts, you must contact the Credit History Bureau. This bureau is freely available on the official website of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
However, to access the data itself that the site possesses, it will be necessary to provide a special additional code to the subject of credit histories. It will be provided by the subject himself, the enterprise in question.
Data of this type is universally transmitted, there is nothing risky, except when the company has unseemly facts in its history, hiding which it refuses to transmit the code. Upon receipt of the data of this code, it is entered on the official website of the Central Bank, after which it displays all the requested information.
This type of check is also called credit history monitoring. Above is attached a sample credit report.
Debt related to a civil contract
Here begins the first difficulties in the search for truth. A complete database of debts of this type has not yet been implemented, which complicates the receipt of information, but does not make it impossible. How to check LLC for a given debt?
To search for debts of this type, you will need to interact with the head of the enterprise. It is the accountants of the LLC that will provide information on valid contracts, on the accounting register, on the statement of charges. You should talk with employees to obtain accurate data. This is done because a good level accountant has sufficient knowledge to conceal some of the most important information from the new owners of the enterprise, but employees do not need to hide this data.
How to check LLC for legal cases?
As an additional measure, a written request to the local bailiff service may be implemented in writing. This will check the company for legal hardships that are not currently authorized.
The official site of the arbitration court will also help here. Such resources always provide information collected in databases of court proceedings with the participation of LLC. Here you can familiarize yourself with the decisions on the application to the enterprise of a wide variety of sanctions, financial penalties associated with a civil law transaction. All that is needed to open access to this information is to know the TIN of the enterprise and its official exact name.
How to check an LLC through a business certificate?
All reports from official state websites are combined in this type of certificate. Here and data on pledges, and the number of employees in the state, revenue, founders, co-owners of the enterprise. This document shows the financial statements, identifies the most important indicators and saves the customer a lot of time and effort. It is usually ordered from intermediaries.
What else to look for when checking an LLC?
When collecting information about the organization in order to check for debts, it is recommended to pay attention to the possibility of future problems for the future owner. In addition to checking the LLC for debts, it is also necessary to pay attention to some details. History knows many cases of the existence of one-day enterprises created for the sole purpose of conducting illegal operations or transactions. After these dishonest operations, these companies are put up for sale. In order to avoid buying an organization with just such a fate, it is recommended to analyze all those with whom the legal entity has ever collaborated. An alarming factor here will be a small number of contractors with a suspiciously large volume of operations. This must be paid close attention. It may also be extremely suspicious that during a certain period of time after interacting with the company being checked, the counterparties went bankrupt, declared bankrupt.
Knowing the debts of the LLC, you should be sure that there is no possibility of additional debts. It is necessary to reinsure twice so that in the end you do not find unreasonable problems for yourself by making a purchase of a suspicious enterprise, which will turn out to be a “one-day company”. In order to check the company, you should make a list of everyone with whom transactions were made, to whom money was transferred. Then you need to submit a request to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities regarding counterparties and call the received phone numbers, to verify the reality of these organizations, their condition for bankruptcy. Such companies may also be in the liquidation phase, which also will not be in favor of the auditee. If these points are missed, and it turns out that the history of the company contains such cases of interaction, then this will most likely result in fines and income taxes when checked by the Federal Tax Service.
At the moment, there are a large number of services specializing in checks of this kind. They allow you to see all the information about the LLC of interest, without contacting any additional services. The entire collection of information on all fronts falls on the shoulders of service employees.