Getting money out of bank and closing a company

[segnic]

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum and certainly wished I had discovered it earlier as loads of useful and enlightening topics here.

Anyway, a friend and I bought a little sunny place in Croatia almost 4 years ago now, as a company. Due to changing personal circumstances we decided it was time to sell.

We finally found a foreign buyer who wanted to buy our place as a d.o.o also and after some absolutely crazy and costly bureaucratic hassle (might tell the story some other time, could be useful to some), we finally signed the deeds.

Now here is where I would like to receive your advices and feedbacks:

After the place got sold, we obviously wanted to get our money back but hit yet another hurdle: apparently we were meant to get a number from the National Bank of Croatia when we brought the money in the country to purchase the flat and opened the account. Nobody told us and we did not know, so… we don’t have that number.

The PBZ, which holds our account, basically told us this money was not ours, it was the company’s and that due to the lack of number, the fact that because we did not have that number we could not prove where our money came from in the first place, then we could not touch that money! And that if we tried, “Zagreb” would be flagged, and that it was our problem and no advice could be given and so on…! After a lot of aggravation and with the help of our normally not very clued-up accountant we did eventually manage to “sneak out” our “capital” from the FINA and brought it back with us.

Now we still have some money there. We also have some taxes to pay we think (which? we don’t quite know apart from Capital Gain Tax? If anybody can tell us what to expect that would be great).

We are wondering whether we can pay these taxes when we finally know the amounts, and then somehow get whatever is left via FINA again? Or has anybody ever tried to get their money out from PBZ or another bank without that National Bank of Croatia dreaded number??

Any advice appreciated!

Also….. We still have a company that probably nobody is ever going to want to buy from us…. After finding out the hassle, costs and time needed to close a company and since we don’t have the “number” and so on, I’ll be honest, we are just soooooooo tempted to just pay what needs paying, tell our accountant to forget about us and just leave and forget that company…. forever ….if you see what I mean? Any likelihood that the Croatian authorities somehow get back to us do you think.
It may be naughty but so fed up I find it hard to care anymore….

Looking forward to your feedbacks,

Segnic

[francis]

capital gain is 0%, but you should have payed 23% PDV , vat on sale price,
it seems you have done lots of things wrong, but there is few things here that you can do right,
free market, is not understood, walk away, and dont look back

[splitska]

sending you a message

[Carol]

Jan 18, 2010 22:18:09 GMT 1 francis said:

you should have payed 23% PDV , vat on sale price,

Not unless it is something that you did building work on with company money.

• If you buy through a company and develop, then PDV is paid on the sale price for the part you developed and 20% profit tax is payable if your company makes a profit.
  
  
• If you buy through a company and do no building work, then 20% profit tax is payable if your company makes a profit.
  
  
• If you buy privately (i.e. own the place in your own name) then 35% capital gains tax is payable if you sell within the first three years of ownership.
  

In answer to the original question, I do not know how you fix the problem of never having got the money legally into the company in the first place.

What your accountant should have done in 2005 is get permission from the National Bank of Croatia (called HNB) for you to loan your company money. It is a straigntforward procedure, taking very little effort and lasts about two weeks maximum. Then you would send your money to the company and it would become the company's money. As the company bought the property, the company has to pay for it, so the company would have given the money to the seller. Then when the company sells the property, it gets the money and you call in your loan and the company gives it back to you.

Maybe the permisssion can be got retrospectively but I don't know. It really sounds like you need a new accountant. Ask the estate agent who sold the property for you if she has any suggestions for a new accountant who will be able top give you better advice.
(By the way, was it the estate agent who sold you the property in 2005 who recommended the accountant you have now?).

Hope this helps.

[Carol]

Just a bit more to clear things up...

The number you should have got from HNB was actually money laundering clearance. You were taking money from outside the country and giving it to a Croatian company that you controlled, so what the HNB were supposed to be asked to do was check that you were not trying to wash dirty money.

Every half decent country has money laundering checks and this is one of Croatia's.

It is hard to know what would happen if you took the money out of the country in a suitcase and forgot that you ever owned a company. Maybe very little would happen now, maybe nothing would happen ever, but what if Croatia joins the EU?

Also, you might have trouble getting the money back into your personal bank account at home (because banks everywhere look for people putting in large amounts of unexplained cash as part of their money laundering procedures). You are not allowed to take more than 10,000 euros cash into or out of the EU without permission, so you can't tell your bank that you smuggled it out of Croatia.

I'd encourage you to find a decent accountant who will help you sort this mess out and then close your company for minimal cost.

[Madgolfer]

I am confused?

"We finally found a foreign buyer who wanted to buy our place as a d.o.o"
So did you sell the doo company to them and the property went with it as an asset of the firm?

OR;

" We still have a company that probably nobody is ever going to want to buy from us"
Did you keep the doo company and sell them only the property asset?

Or is this another, separate company you have?

[Madgolfer]

They should have sold the company!

[Carol]

maybe the buyer didn't want to buy it though?

[segnic]

That's right. The (russian) buyer had already created her own d.o.o (well, her lawyer did), which was a real shame....

And the estate agents that sold us the place never told us about the Bank of Croatia number (maybe they did not know) and we were introduce to our accountant after the money was brought in the country so in any case too late to make the application.

I understand about money laundering, in fact my bank in the UK had ask me where the money was going to when I made the transfer to Croatia, but no questions where asked at the other end at the time.

Segnic

[siriwan]

Well, I contacted the HNB when I brought it my money - I sold my house and land in Belgium to come here.

They said I didn't need any special document and should just bring the money in, basically as long as it was through bank transfer, which it was.

I also had my notary in Belgium write an apostilled document saying that I indeed got x € from selling my property in Belgium...

Where the bank went wrong was when they said it was ok to pay cash for a house here :-)))))) And THAT falls under money laundering policies, lol! :-)))

It might be a good idea to gather all the mistakes, mishaps, stupid things, plain corruption things we were all exposed.... :-))