Every company in Australia has to have a registered office. It is where official notices and legal documents can be sent to the company, and it is on the public record. You can use your business premises, your home, or your accountant’s office. The choice mostly comes down to one question: who opens the mail?
If you trade as a sole trader, or in a partnership with no company in the picture, you can stop reading here. You do not have a registered office and there is nothing to decide. This is for people who have a company, including the sort of company that just sits there as the trustee of a family trust and does nothing else.
If your current arrangement works, there is nothing to do today and no deadline to meet. It is worth ten minutes when something is about to shift: you are moving premises, selling the house, winding a company up, or setting up a new one.
What a registered office actually is
It does three jobs, and only the first one is obvious.
- It is ASIC’s fallback address for the company. If no registered agent is nominated, annual review notices, invoices, warnings and deregistration notices go there. Where we act as your registered agent, most of that reaches us electronically instead, which is a separate arrangement from holding your address.
- It is where documents can be legally served on the company. Served is a legal word. It means delivered in a way that counts, whether or not anybody read it.
- It is public. Anyone who buys a company search can see it.
The rules around it are short:
- It has to be a physical street address in Australia. A PO box will not do.
- If the company does not occupy the premises, the company must be able to show ASIC the occupier’s written consent. So if you use our address, we sign something, and we have to be able to produce it.
- A change has to be lodged with ASIC within 28 days.
- If ASIC has reason to believe the company is not at the address it has been given, it can start moving the registered office to a director’s address. It writes to the company first and allows 28 days to nominate somewhere else, so it is not instant, but it does happen.
What it costs when mail goes unopened
“Keep your address up to date” sounds like paperwork advice until you see the numbers behind it.
The cheap end: ASIC late fees
Most companies get an annual review notice each year, usually on the anniversary of registration. It goes to the registered agent if there is one, and to the registered office if there is not. There is a fee to pay and a statement to check, and if the fee is late ASIC adds a late fee automatically. There is no warning letter first and no grace period. Charitable companies registered with the ACNC sit outside this, and special purpose companies pay less.
| What | Fee |
|---|---|
| Annual review, standard proprietary company | $342 |
| Paid up to one month late | $102 on top |
| Paid more than one month late | $428 on top |
Say you have a trading company and a trustee company for the family trust. Both are registered at a house you moved out of eighteen months ago. Both annual reviews turn up there, both sit in a stranger’s letterbox, and both go more than a month past due. At the fees above, that is $684 of review fees you were always going to pay, plus $856 of late fees you were not. And nobody told you, because the letter went to the old address.
The expensive end: the company stops existing
If the annual review fee stays unpaid, ASIC does not chase you forever. Once it has been outstanding for at least twelve months, ASIC may begin deregistering the company. Deregistration is not a fine. The company ceases to exist, which means it cannot trade, cannot be sued, cannot sue, and cannot hold anything. Its own property vests in ASIC, and anything it held on trust vests in the Commonwealth.
Think about what that means if the deregistered company was the trustee of your family trust, or held the title to a property, or was the entity on your contracts and your insurance policy. Reinstating it is possible and people do it, but it is an application, it costs money, and it happens on the regulator’s timetable rather than yours. Meanwhile whatever you were trying to settle or sell sits and waits.
The serious end: a 21 day clock you did not know was running
The bit that catches people
A creditor who is owed money can serve a statutory demand on your company, and the registered office is one of the places it can validly be served. From the day service takes effect the company has 21 days to pay, to secure or settle the debt to the creditor’s satisfaction, or to apply to the court to set the demand aside. The court cannot extend those 21 days.
Let it pass and the company is presumed insolvent for a winding up application made in the next three months, which puts you a long way behind. When service takes effect depends on how it was served, and a posted demand counts as served days after it is posted, so the clock can be running well before anyone opens the envelope.
If one of these turns up, ring us and a solicitor the same day. A week of thinking about it is the most expensive week you will have.
The same logic applies to court documents generally. The registered office is not the only place a company can be served, but it is the one that works whether or not anybody can find you in person. If a supplier sues the company and the paperwork is served there, the case moves along whether or not you engaged with it. A default judgment entered because nobody responded is a real judgment, and unwinding one is a lawyer’s job rather than an accountant’s.
The one our address does not fix
This one cuts against us.
If a company does not meet its PAYG withholding, super guarantee or GST obligations by the due date, its directors can become personally liable for them. A director penalty notice is the letter the ATO has to send before it starts recovering that money from you, and it carries its own 21 day clock. It does not go to the company’s registered office. It goes to an address ASIC’s records show for you as a director, which may be your home or your business.
The 21 days runs from the day the ATO posts it. Not receiving it is not a defence. If you moved house in 2022 and never updated your personal details with ASIC, the notice is validly served on a letterbox you have not seen in years, and the first you hear of it is when the ATO comes after you personally.
So moving the company’s registered office to us does nothing for that. Your own director details are a separate record and you have to keep them current too. It takes five minutes. If you are not certain what ASIC has for you personally, ask us and we will look.
It is not the same thing as your business address
ASIC holds two addresses for your company and people mix them up constantly. They can be the same address. They often should not be.
| Registered office | Principal place of business | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | Receiving official notices and legal service | Recording where the company actually operates |
| PO box allowed | No | No |
| Can it be your accountant’s | Yes, with written consent | No, it is where you trade |
| Public on a company search | Yes | Yes |
| What turns up there | ASIC mail, court documents, statutory demands | Customers, deliveries, staff |
The three options, side by side
| Your trading premises | Your home | Your accountant’s office | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who opens the post | Whoever is in that day | You, eventually | Someone who knows what the document is |
| When you move | Lodge a change within 28 days, every time | Same, and easy to forget in the middle of a house move | Nothing happens. The address stays put |
| On the public register | Your shopfront, which customers already know | Your home address | An office address in town |
| Cost | Nothing | Nothing | An annual fee |
| Where it goes wrong | The site closes or the lease ends and the address goes stale | Process servers at the house, and urgent mail lost in the pile | You forget to tell us when something changes |
Who should use their accountant’s address
It is worth doing if any of these sound like you:
- The company does not trade from anywhere. A trustee company for a family trust, a holding company, a company sitting on the shelf. It has no premises and no letterbox of its own, so it borrows one. This is the strongest case of the lot.
- You are on the tools, on the road or on site most days, and the post sits in a pile for a week before anyone looks at it.
- You work from home and would rather the family address was not the company’s public address.
- You lease short term, or you expect to move in the next few years.
- You have been caught out by an ASIC deadline before. Once is usually enough.
Stick with your own address if you have a shopfront or an office where somebody opens the post every day, if you want the company’s public address to be the place customers find you, and if you are comfortable telling an urgent government envelope from a routine one.
Most of the trouble we see is not somebody ignoring a letter. It is somebody filing it, meaning to come back to it, and running out of week.
What changed on 1 July 2026
Accounting firms came under Australia’s anti money laundering laws for the first time on 1 July 2026. The law does not cover everything an accountant does. It covers a specific list of services, and holding a registered office for a company is on that list.
Your tax return is not on the list. Neither is your BAS, your bookkeeping, or lodging your annual ASIC review. That distinction is the whole point, because it decides what we have to ask you for.
If we only prepare your return and your BAS, nothing changes. Where our address stands in for an address the company would otherwise operate from, the law treats that as a regulated service, and we have to:
- establish who we are actually dealing with, against reliable and independent sources, which can be electronic rather than photocopies
- work out who ultimately owns and controls the company, through any trust or holding structure sitting above it
- check names against sanctions lists
- rate the risk of the arrangement, and keep reviewing it rather than ticking it off once
- keep the records for seven years, counted from when the arrangement ends rather than from when it starts
- report a matter to AUSTRAC where we have reasonable grounds to suspect it, and there are limits on what we are allowed to tell you about that
Why an address, of all things. An address is what makes a company look like it is really somewhere. It is what lets an entity run from overseas open an Australian bank account and look local. That is precisely why the service is regulated, and none of it is a comment on you.
If you were already using our address before 1 July 2026, there are transitional rules and we may not have to start from scratch with you. A new arrangement gets the full check. Either way the ongoing monitoring applies from here on, so it is not a form you fill in once and forget.
So from now on the registered office carries its own fee, separate from everything else. It is not a price rise on your accounting. Our corporate secretarial work, the annual review, changes of directors and shareholders, the ASIC lodgements, all stays where it is.
Setting up a new company or trust is its own conversation, because forming an entity is on the regulated list as well. If that is what you are about to do, ask us and we will tell you what is involved before you commit to anything.
What that fee is depends on the structure, because a single trading company is a different piece of work from a group with a trust and two corporate trustees above it. Ask us and we will tell you what yours would be.
The parts we would rather you heard from us
There are reasons not to do this. You should hear them from us before you decide.
- It costs money. Your own letterbox is free and always will be.
- You will be asked for identification you have never been asked for before, and for details about who ultimately owns and controls the company. We cannot waive it. You can decline, but then we cannot hold the address.
- We see the mail first. If you would rather open your own ASIC correspondence, this is not for you.
- It does not cover director penalty notices. Those go to your own address, as above, and people assume the arrangement covers them.
- You have to tell us when things change. A new director, a share transfer, a new phone number. It will be in the engagement terms, because we cannot keep our own records straight without it.
- It is not mail forwarding. Your ordinary business post still goes to you. This covers ASIC and legal documents.
- If you leave, the address has to change, which is a form and a 28 day deadline.
If you are moving, or selling the house
This works whoever holds your address.
- Look up what ASIC actually has. Your company’s registered office and your own details as a director are separate records. People update one and not the other, then wonder why mail still goes to the old place.
- Find the company’s ACN. It is on the annual review notice, and you need it for everything else.
- The 28 days runs from the day the address changed, not from the day you got around to thinking about it.
- If you are selling and the company is registered at the house, deal with it before settlement. Afterwards, official mail lands in somebody else’s letterbox and they have no reason to care.
- Check every company. If you have three, they do not move together just because you moved.
- Check the mail redirection you set up. Australia Post redirection ends. ASIC’s records do not, and neither do the deadlines.
What we do if you use our address
- Hold the address, and keep the written consent ASIC requires so it can be produced on request.
- Open and sort the ASIC and court mail the day it arrives, and tell you what is urgent.
- Pay or query the annual review before the late fee applies.
- Lodge your changes of address and officeholder details, on time.
- Keep the identification and monitoring records the law now requires.
- Tell you plainly when something that arrived at our door is a job for your solicitor.
The short version
- Every company needs a registered office. It is public, it has to be a real street address, and it is where legal documents can be served.
- Missing what arrives there costs hundreds per company in ASIC late fees, and a long enough silence can cost you the company.
- A statutory demand served there starts a 21 day clock the court cannot extend, whether or not anyone opens it. Ring a solicitor the day one arrives.
- A director penalty notice goes to your personal ASIC address instead, so keep that current no matter who holds the company’s address.
- Use your own address if someone reliably opens the post there every day. Use ours if the company has no premises of its own, if you are rarely at yours, or if you would rather your home was not on the register.
- From 1 July 2026 holding a registered office is a regulated service under the anti money laundering rules, which is why it now carries its own fee. Ordinary return and BAS work is not affected. Setting up a company or trust is, so ask before you do.
If you are not sure which company is registered where, or what ASIC has for you personally, we can look it all up with you and tell you in ten minutes whether anything needs changing. Book a meeting and bring whatever ASIC paperwork you can find. We are in Albury and we act for companies here, across the river in Wodonga, and out through the Riverina.
About this article. Written by the team at Business Edge Advisors, Registered Tax Agent 20651000. Last reviewed 11 September 2026. General information only, and not advice about your particular circumstances.
