Liquidation of legal entities in Kazakhstan can be voluntary or compulsory. In the first case, the company, represented by the founders, makes a decision on voluntary liquidation, preparation of an interim and liquidation balance sheet, publishes an announcement, submits liquidation reports and an application for a tax audit.

You can proceed immediately with a tax audit if you are sure that no violations and shortcomings have been committed during the last 5 years in tax and accounting.

In such cases, business leaders rely on the opinion of their accountants, however, even experienced accountants often make mistakes in tax and / or accounting, which, based on the results of a tax audit, lead to multi-million additional charges and fines.

To avoid such consequences, we propose to conduct a preliminary tax audit to identify and eliminate possible violations before filing liquidation tax reports and balance sheets.

It should be noted that no less important is the availability of complete accounting documentation for the entire period related to the subject of the tax audit.

Lack of accounting documentation will lead to an increase in the tax base and additional charges of taxes and penalties. This fully applies not only to legal entities, but also to structural divisions, branches and representative offices, despite the widespread misconception regarding a non-commercial nature of representative office.

Based on the results of tax audit and payment of taxes, if they are additionally charged, fiscal authority will provide a certificate of absence of tax arrears, after which you can proceed to a next stage to remove representative (branch) office from registrar’s records with justice authorities.

Voluntary liquidation may be suspended for indefinite period if taxpayer does not agree with results of tax audit and amount of additional charges. In this case, the tax audit act and the notification of the tax authority can be appealed in court.

Before that, it is necessary to find out how much the arguments about disagreement with the results of tax inspection correlate with the requirements of tax legislation. Sometimes, the most daring statements, which at first glance deserve attention and support, turn out to be untenable during trial.

Therefore, returning to a stage preceding filing of an application for a state tax inspection, it should be emphasized the importance of a preliminary tax audit, which is capable of identifying controversial issues.

In practice, many of our clients, whom we were able to convince to conduct a pre-tax audit, had the opportunity to assess the situation and make a decision to continue voluntary liquidation, or to suspend with another tax application to suspend the filing of tax returns for up to 5 years, which will make it possible to expire the limitation period for tax liabilities, depending on which period the risks identified during the pre-tax audit belong to.

Voluntary liquidation, which at first glance looks like a quite common procedure, may turn into an insoluble issue for the taxpayer, in order to avoid which we always recommend contacting professionals.

BOND STONE attorneys and lawyers will provide you with qualified assistance in voluntary tax liquidation, as well as assistance in bankruptcy of an enterprise or the so-called forced liquidation.