Difference between legal and actual address.

Firms and institutions can conduct their activities using 2 addresses - legal and actual. What are these coordinates?

What is a legal address?

Under the legal address of a firm is understood to be the one indicated in its constituent documents and simultaneously recorded in state registers.

Interestingly, in the legislation of the Russian Federation, the term that sounds like "legal address" is not officially defined. But in business practice, it is used regularly - including in the interaction of private enterprises with government agencies.

In the Civil Code of the Russian Federation there is another concept - “the place of state registration of a legal entity”, which corresponds to the address of the company in the city where it was registered with the Federal Tax Service. In the process of adapting this provision of the law to business practice, the term “legal address” was formed.

It should be noted that during the state registration of a legal entity, its founder may indicate its own, home address - but only if the company's activities are not related to production or the organization of work in an office format. But most often the legal address is indicated that corresponds to a specialized room that is rented or bought by the founder.

What is a business address?

Actual address - one that reflects the real location of the organization. As a rule, it is used in official document flow - when the company exchanges letters with counterparties, clients, government agencies.

The actual address may coincide with the legal one. However, as individual statistical studies show, in some business sectors the number of Russian firms operating at a physical address that does not coincide with the legal address is about 80%.

At the same time, it is highly desirable that such a state of affairs should not be observed. The fact is that if it detects a discrepancy between the legal and actual address of an organization, the FTS (for example, having received declarations of the same legal entity from different addresses) may impose a fine on it - as on a taxpayer who did not provide information about the opening of a separate subdivision. Which is logical - if a company carries out correspondence from different addresses, then it most likely has branches.

Moreover, apart from the fine for failure to provide the FTS with information about the opening of a new division, a firm may be subject to such sanctions as closing a current account and even liquidation by arbitration.

Comparison

The main difference between a legal address and an actual one is that the first one is officially registered in state registers and is also recorded in the constituent documents of the company. In turn, the firm is not obliged to indicate the actual address anywhere, but it is highly desirable that it ensure that it matches the legal one.

Having determined what is the difference between the legal and actual address, we will fix the main points in the table.

Table

Legal address Actual address
What do they have in common?
The legal address may coincide with the actual one, according to the law - it must correspond to it
What is the difference between them? ​​
Registered in state registers, recorded in constituent documentsNot registered anywhere, but used in official document circulation, since it reflects the real location of the company
.