Is your business showing inactive on the CAC portal? You don’t need to be scared, it is a common issue among lots of businesses in Nigeria.
Although it’s common, it is not something you want for your business.
In this article, you will learn what it means when your business is inactive and how to reactivate an inactive business status on the corporate affairs commission website.
Table of Contents
How to Check if your Business is Inactive 🔍
If you already know how to check your business status, you can skip this.
To check if your business is inactive on the CAC portal, you need to conduct a business name search.
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Head over to the CAC search portal, type in your business name and click the search button.
A list of businesses may appear, scroll down till you see your business name. Under the business name, you should see the status as active or inactive.
Why is my Business Inactive? 🤔
You messed up. Yes, you messed up. If nobody will tell you, I’m telling you.
You registered your business with CAC and then you ran away. You thought once you register your business, collect your certificate and plaster it on your social media pages, you are done with CAC.
Nah, that’s not how this works. In fact, you are just getting started with the CAC.
The reason why your business is inactive is because you have not filed an annual return for your business for more than a year.
After registering your business, you are expected to file annual returns. As the name implies, you need to do this yearly.
Another reason why your business might be inactive is if the business is still under registration. This is no fault of yours.
Once the registration is completed, an RC or BN number will be assigned and your business will become active.
What happens if my business remains inactive on CAC?
After a long period of remaining inactive (about 10 years), the corporate affairs commission will deactivate your business.
Once this happens, your business becomes unregistered. Anyone can register the name if they like it.
Also, if your business is inactive, you cannot register a business bank account because the bank will request for your CAC status report.
You may not be able to access business loans as most lenders will check if your business is active.
Your competitors could also use the inactive status of your business against you.
Let’s say you are bidding for a government contract among 7 other companies, one of the company’s can easily do a background check through the CAC portal and discover that your business has not filed its annual returns. They can raise this with the contracting agency to question your compliance status. This would most likely lead to disqualification.
How to Reactivate an Inactive Business Status on CAC
All you need to do is to file an annual return for your business on all the years you have defaulted.
The price you will pay depends on how many years you have not filed. There is also a penalty for filing late.
You can read our article on how to file annual returns with the CAC.
After your business annual return has been filed, it will take about 3-7 working days for your business to become active on the corporate affairs commission website.
How to prevent your business from becoming inactive
It’s simple and straightforward.
File your annual returns on time. If you do this consistently, your business will never be at the risk of becoming inactive.
Thank you for reading our article on how to reactivate an inactive business status on the CAC website. You can also read our article on 10 things to do after registering your business and how to register a trademark in Nigeria.
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