A company that has stopped trading has not stopped existing. CAC's register still holds it, with most of the same duties as an active business.
Trading or not, the company still sits on CAC's register
Nothing about incorporation switches off because the business has gone quiet. The company still has directors, still has shareholders, and still has a file at CAC.
Founders sometimes treat dormancy as a pause button for everything. It is not. Only the trading has stopped. The compliance duties carry on.
This matters most for a company kept dormant on purpose, holding a name or a licence for later use. The lack of activity inside the business does not reduce what the company owes CAC on paper.
The registered address duty does not pause
A company must keep a valid registered address on file, whether it is trading or not. If the company moves, or the lease on its old address ends, the same rule applies.
File the change within 14 days of the change. A dormant company with no staff checking post at the old address is more likely to miss something important sent there, which makes this duty easy to overlook.
Director and PSC records must still stay current
A dormant company can still lose a director to resignation, removal, or death. The same filing deadline applies as it would for a trading company.
Significant-control information also has to stay current, even with no active business behind it. A change in who owns the shares does not pause just because the company itself is quiet.
Up-to-date annual returns and PSC information before CAC will process most filings anyway, dormant company or not. Letting these records slip only stores up a problem for whenever the company needs to file something again.
The annual return duty, covered in full elsewhere
The annual return is a duty people often ask about for a dormant company. Active and dormant companies alike, with no exception for a company that has stopped trading.
Does a dormant company owe CAC returns? covers that filing and its fee in full, so this article will not repeat it here.
What happens if a dormant company goes quiet too long
A company that stops filing entirely for long enough risks CAC striking it off the register. That is rarely the outcome a dormant company's directors actually want, even if they have stopped paying attention to it.
If closing down is genuinely the goal, voluntarily striking off a small company is the orderly way to do it, rather than letting the company drift toward an involuntary strike-off instead.
You can start a CAC company registration if you have not yet incorporated. The CAC registration hub links the rest of this series on post-incorporation duties.