Registered office: where your company lives

What the seat determines

• The competent commercial register. A Geneva company registers in Geneva; if it moves its seat to the canton of Vaud, its file follows.
• The tax domicile. Profit and capital tax is paid to the canton and municipality of the seat, and rates differ markedly from one canton to another.
• The address for notifications. A formal notice, a summons, an administrative decision are deemed received at the register address. Not collecting your mail has never suspended a deadline.

Three ways to have an address

Your own premises. The simple case: the address on the lease is that of the seat. Check that the lease allows commercial use, a residential lease does not always.

At a third party's, “c/o”. At home, at a partner's, at your fiduciary's. Perfectly legal, on one condition: the host signs a declaration granting you a domicile at their address. Without it, the register refuses the entry. The address is then written “Street no., postcode town, c/o Surname First name” or c/o company name.

A commercial domiciliation. A fiduciary, a business centre, a coworking space: they rent you an address, often with mail handling. It is a service contract, with an unregulated price, compare, and read what is included: the bare address, or also forwarding and reception.

A “c/o” address appears as such in the register, open to anyone. If you domicile the company at home, your private address becomes public. Many only realise it when they look themselves up on Zefix.

Changing address

Any change of domicile is declared to the commercial register. A move within the same municipality is a change of address; a move to another canton is a transfer of seat, which requires a decision of the competent body and, for an Sàrl or an SA, an amendment of the articles.

The fee for entering, amending or deleting a domicile is CHF 30. The real cost of an oversight is elsewhere: in the mail that keeps arriving at the old address and the deadlines running without you.