Directors of charities and non-profits in Australia may need a Director ID before the 30th of November—have you applied for yours?
By the 30th of November, directors of companies in Australia will be required to have a director identification number, called a director ID.
The initiative assigns each director one specific ID number to be kept permanently. The purpose is to link a company to an individual in an effort to reduce the incidence of strategies that seek to circumvent regulations or to abrogate responsibilities to creditors.
Not all the individuals to whom this new requirement applies are aware that they’re soon to be legally required to have a director ID. It’s a new legal requirement, and what publicity it has enjoyed hasn’t always specified the broad scope of its application. You may need to get a director ID if you are the director of any company, including a registered charity or non-profit, or an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporation.
Those who don’t comply by the November 30th deadline could face both civil and criminal penalties, including fines of up to $13,000 and restrictions on business activities. ABRS deputy registrar Karen Foat is quoted via the ABC as saying, “There’s not a hard and fast date after which we will be applying penalties, if people are trying to do the right thing.”
This new requirement is administered by the Australian Business Registry Services (ABRS), a unit established in 2021 under the Modernising Business Registers (MBR) program. The MBR program is an initiative developed to streamline the processes by which business information is lodged with the Government. Any penalties issued will be enforced by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) under the Corporations Act 2001.
If you’re not sure whether or not this new requirement applies to you, you can read about the Director ID initiative here on the ABRS website.
