Articles on: Directors

How to resign a public officer

All companies are required by law to appoint a Public Officer within one month of the company’s date of incorporation. Failure to appoint a Public Officer within the designated time frame, will result in non-compliance. The Public Officer is required to be a South African resident, and is in essence the face of the company. Either a director (in the case of Closed Corporations) or the Company Secretary may act as the company’s Public Officer. If there is a change of Public Officer, the company must notify SARS within 14 days to avoid hefty fines.

Estimated Reading Time: 1 minute

With InfoDocs, resigning a Public Officer is quick and simple.

Step 1: In your company profile, navigate to the Directors tab, and click on the Public Officer to be removed.

Step 2: Under Actions, click on Terminate Appointment.

Step 3: Stipulate the resignation/removal date and the reason for termination and click Save.

Step 4: InfoDocs will automatically create an Ordinary Resolution and a Letter of Resignation. Download and save these documents and close the box. Alternatively, you can access these documents later in the Documents tab under PDF Templates.

Remember: To confirm the resignation of a registered Public Officer, the above documents need to be submitted to SARS along with the necessary documents that stipulate the appointment of the new Public Officer within 14 days.

For guidelines on how to appoint a new Public Officer, read our Help Desk article on the subject here.

For further information on how to finalise Public Officer changes with SARS, please refer to the information on the SARS website here.

Updated on: 09/06/2023

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