If you are the director of a Dutch limited liability company (BV) then there is an obligation to publish with the Chambers of Commerce, how does this work?
Based on the trade legislation we have there is an obligation for the management of the BV company to publish the annual publication report within 13 months from the closing date of the bookyear. The filing obligation is not limited to Dutch companies, also foreign companies that are registered in the Netherlands that have a filing obligation in their home country have the same filing obligation in the Netherlands.
If you do not comply with this filing obligation, then in case of bankruptcy the board can be held personally liable for the bankruptcy next to the company.
Some companies decide to take this risk in order to prevent publishing details which can be read by their competitors as well.
Until last year no penalties were issued, but we learned that this is not longer the case. A EUR 900 penalty per company is issued to each company that has not complied in time with its publishing obligation.
