What is asic reinstatement?
A deregistered company brought back — the application prepared with the evidence ASIC actually accepts.
A company gets deregistered by ASIC for one of a handful of ordinary reasons: the annual review fee went unpaid past the late-fee window, the company failed to lodge documents ASIC required, or it was voluntarily wound up under Form 6010 by mistake when it still had a use. Whatever the trigger, the effect is the same — the company stops existing as a legal entity, its ACN is cancelled, and any assets it still held vest in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission by operation of law. That last part surprises most directors: a deregistered company isn't dormant, it's gone, and the bank account, the lease, the contracts it was a party to are all now sitting under a company that legally isn't there to hold them.
Getting it back is Form 581, an application for ASIC reinstatement. ASIC will reinstate administratively — no court involved — when the case is straightforward: the applicant was a director, secretary or member at the time of deregistration, there's no dispute about who's applying or why, and the outstanding money owed to ASIC gets paid before or with the application. That outstanding-money figure is never one number. It stacks the fees owed at the moment of deregistration with every annual review fee that would have fallen due for each year the company sat deregistered, and ASIC publishes its own reinstatement-cost calculator because the total genuinely depends on how long the gap ran and what company type it is.
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | ASIC reinstatement, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
ASIC reinstatement in Australia
Form 581 is the administrative pathway — a different mechanism exists for contested cases
ASIC reinstates a deregistered company administratively under Form 581 when the case is clean: the applicant held a qualifying role at deregistration, there's no dispute, and the money owed to ASIC is paid with the application. Where ASIC won't reinstate administratively — a contested reinstatement, a standing dispute, unresolved creditor issues — the route is a court order under s.601AH of the Corporations Act, which is litigation handled by an AU legal practitioner, not an admin filing.
The reinstatement cost is variable by design — there is no flat fee to quote
What's owed stacks the fees outstanding at the moment of deregistration with every annual review fee that would have fallen due for each year the company was deregistered, so a company gone for one year owes materially less than one gone for five. ASIC publishes its own reinstatement-cost calculator for this exact reason. We reconcile the actual figure per company against that calculator before an application goes anywhere near lodgement — nobody should quote a single number for this without running the calculation.
Reinstatement is retrospective, which cuts both ways
Once ASIC approves reinstatement, the company is treated as if it had never been deregistered — its ACN is restored and its legal continuity is preserved for anything that relied on it during the gap: leases, contracts, ongoing obligations. That retrospective effect is exactly why the evidence file has to be accurate: a company reinstated on incomplete evidence carries that gap forward into every document that assumed continuous existence.
Assets vest in ASIC on deregistration, and reinstatement is what gets them back
Under s.601AD of the Corporations Act, any property the company held at deregistration vests in ASIC automatically — it doesn't just sit in limbo, it legally passes out of the company's hands. Reinstatement restores the company's capacity to deal with that property again, which is one of the practical reasons directors apply, beyond simply wanting the entity itself back.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A completed Form 581 evidence package: the applicant's director, secretary or member status confirmed as at the date of deregistration, sourced from the last ASIC extract before deregistration.
- A year-by-year reconciliation of every fee owed to ASIC for the deregistered period — fees outstanding at deregistration plus each subsequent annual review fee — checked against ASIC's own reinstatement-cost calculator.
- A payment-readiness confirmation: the total amount owed to ASIC laid out per year, so the client pays the correct figure with the application rather than an estimate that gets bounced back.
- A list of any outstanding lodgements or documents ASIC will want current before it processes the reinstatement (officeholder details, registered office, share structure) — surfaced before submission, not discovered after.
- A one-page timeline of the deregistration and the events prompting reinstatement, written for the client's own record as much as for ASIC's file.
- A flag, in writing, the moment anything in the case looks contested or disputed — so the file gets routed to an AU legal practitioner for the court-order pathway before time is spent preparing an administrative application that would be refused.
