Finland Company Deregistration from the Trade Register 2026

1. Grounds

2. Effects

Deregistration prevents normal business operation and can create banking, contract, permit, tax/filing and representation problems. It should not be used as a shortcut for voluntary closure.

3. Re-entry

Following the Trade Register Act reform, companies removed or ordered into liquidation since 2023 may apply for re-entry or termination of liquidation if statutory requirements are met.

4. Removal is a consequence, not a penalty

PRH does not remove a company from the register over a single late filing; removal is the accumulated consequence of obligations left unmet for a long time. The commonest ground is financial statements that have gone unfiled for years, joined by an incomplete board, an address for service that has lapsed, or evidence that the company is not in fact trading.

Nor does the process run silently: PRH sends a warning and allows time to put things right, and the period is also announced publicly. The trouble is usually that the warning does not arrive — where the registered address is out of date or the company's email has been abandoned, the company stays unaware of its own removal. Keeping the address and contact details current is therefore as basic an obligation as bookkeeping.

5. What happens to a removed company's debts and assets

Being struck off does not extinguish debts. The company ceases to exist, but creditors can still pursue their claims and the board's responsibility for its own term continues; where taxes and pension contributions went unpaid, a director's personal liability is assessed separately. Removal is not the orderly form of closure: a liquidation closes the company by paying its debts, while removal merely deletes the entry.

Assets create their own problem. Where a struck-off company held a bank account, property or a receivable, these are left in suspense and cannot be used without a liquidation or a re-registration of the company. So for a company whose trading is to end, the right course is not to abandon the obligations and wait to be removed, but to resolve on liquidation and run the process properly.

6. Administrative removal versus closing the company yourself

A company can leave the register by two different routes, and the consequences are not the same. In a voluntary closure the shareholders decide, a liquidation is carried out, debts are paid, what remains is distributed and the company ends in an orderly way. In administrative removal, PRH strikes the company off on its own initiative because legal obligations were not met; that is a housekeeping measure and does not mean the debts have gone.

The difference is felt not only in procedure but afterwards. Board members of a company that went through a proper liquidation can document the process, so their later ventures are untroubled by it. Administrative removal leaves behind unanswered notifications, tax registrations that were never closed and, likely, unpaid debts. These can turn later into an argument about personal liability, into questions from banks and accountants when a new company is formed, and in some cases into a restriction on acting as a director.

7. The warning signs on the road to removal

Administrative removal does not happen suddenly; a series of accumulated omissions comes first. The commonest is financial statements not being filed with PRH for years. To that are added a beneficial owner notification never made, no valid member left on the board, the company's service address not being current, and tax registrations being deactivated. Where several of these signs appear together, the process has already begun.

PRH then sends notices to the company and to the directors it knows of, allowing time to put things right. The commonest reason those notices are missed is that the address was never updated, or the person the post reaches no longer concerns themselves with the company. So even in a company whose activity has in fact stopped, the service address and the board entry should be kept current: learning of the process and being able to answer produces a far better outcome than being struck off in silence.

8. What happens after removal, and can it be reversed?

A company struck from the register cannot carry on business, cannot enter contracts and as a rule can no longer use its bank account. But assets registered in its name and unpaid debts do not disappear; they remain as a residue that has to be resolved in law. That residue can come as a surprise to directors when a creditor later appears.

In certain conditions the removal can be corrected, or the company can be put into liquidation and ended properly. That requires completing the missing filings, reconstituting the board where necessary, and running the process with PRH. In practice this is more expensive and slower than closing the company properly in the first place. So for a company that has stopped trading, the right decision is not to wait and watch the removal happen but to start the liquidation deliberately.

9. What the board must do at the point of closure

A board's responsibility does not end when the company does; it intensifies. Informing creditors, observing the correct order of payment, completing employees' entitlements, closing the accounting records and filing the final returns are the work of this period. When one of those steps is skipped, liability can move from the legal entity to the board members themselves.

The point needing most care is payments to shareholders. Distributing assets to shareholders before creditors have been satisfied in full is a transaction that can be clawed back and can create personal liability. Transferring company assets to connected persons below market value is questioned in the same way. Drawing up an order of priority the moment the closure is decided — wages and public debts first, then other creditors, shareholders last — removes most of that risk.

10. Which records to keep after closing, and for how long

Even when a company has ended, the duty to retain accounting and tax records continues. Ledgers, the documents underlying the statements, contracts and payroll records have to be kept accessible for the period the law requires. When the legal entity is gone, that duty falls to the final shareholders and board members; who holds them should be settled in writing.

In practice these records are wanted in three situations above all: when a tax audit asks a retrospective question, when an old creditor surfaces, and when a former employee asks for past pay details or an employment certificate. All three can arrive years after closing. Building a digital archive and gathering the files in one place stops the records' whereabouts being forgotten once the contract with the accountant ends. Writing on one page where the archive is kept and who can reach it is far cheaper than trying to remember it years later.

The periods are set by law and they are not the same for everything. Chapter 2, section 10 of the Accounting Act (1336/1997) requires the financial statements, the annual report, the accounting books, the chart of accounts and the list of accounting records to be kept for at least 10 years from the end of the financial year, and the vouchers, the correspondence about business transactions, reconciliation statements and other material not belonging to the accounting books for at least 6 years from the end of the year in which the financial year ended. The duty outlives the company: it falls on whoever was responsible at closure, so settle where the material will live and who can produce it before the company leaves the register.

11. Tax registrations close separately from PRH

A company leaving the register does not mean its tax registrations close automatically. VAT liability, the employer register entry and the prepayment register entry each have to be ended separately. A VAT registration left open keeps the duty to file returns alive even where there is no activity; returns not filed attract late penalties, and those penalties are pursued after the company has closed.

The right order is usually this: stop trading in fact and make the last sale and the last wage payment; then file the notification closing the tax registrations; then complete the final VAT and payroll returns; and only then run the liquidation and the removal from the register. When that order is broken, a tax obligation is left open in the name of a company that appears closed, and correcting it afterwards is always more trouble.