- Removal manifest
- Sheet 7 of 7
- Item 6: closing
When a business closes its site
When a business closes, business.gov.au lists cancelling the website hosting and domain name among the loose ends to tie up, but three things outlast the site itself: the .au domain licence, which ends in one of the ways auDA’s rules set out; the tax records, which the ATO says are generally kept for five years; and customer information, which business.gov.au says to destroy securely or de-identify unless it needs to be kept.
business.gov.au suggests getting help from your accountant and a business adviser before you close. auDA, the ATO and the OAIC are the official places to check each part of this sheet.
01The closing calendar
Each date below comes from the body that sets it, and each runs from its own starting point.
- Before the closing date. business.gov.au lists posting a message on your website among the ways to tell customers you are closing.
- Within 28 days of stopping. business.gov.au says you must cancel your ABN within 28 days of stopping your business activities, after completing your lodgement, reporting and payment obligations.
- 30 days after a company ceases to exist. auDA’s rules deem a licence held by that company cancelled, unless there is documentary evidence that before it ceased to exist the company agreed to transfer the licence to whoever is now using the name, and the transfer otherwise meets the rules.
- Five years. The ATO says records about sales (including the sale of the business and its assets), purchases, payments to employees and payments to other businesses are kept for five years from when they were prepared or obtained, or the transactions completed, whichever is later.
- Seven years for some records. business.gov.au says employee records are generally kept for 7 years, and the ATO notes other regulators’ laws may require seven years for some records.
02The domain name
business.gov.au counts domain names among the business assets to sell or manage when you close. For a .au name, what is held is a licence: auDA’s rules say a person does not legally ‘own’ a domain name, and that a licence can be disposed of in three ways: transferred to an eligible third party, cancelled, or not renewed.
| Way | What auDA says | What follows |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer | The receiver must be eligible and enter a new licence agreement. Where the licence moves under a contract, such as the sale of a business, the transfer is due within 28 days unless the agreement says otherwise. | Full years left on the licence pass to the new holder, up to the five-year maximum. |
| Cancel | A registrant can cancel at any time by written notice to the registrar, which must cancel within two calendar days. | No refund of the wholesale part of the fee outside the cooling-off period. The registrant may ask the registrar to restore a cancelled licence within two calendar days of cancellation, and must pay a restoration fee. |
| Let it lapse | After expiry there is a 30-day grace period in which the licence can still be renewed, but the site and email stop working. | If it is not renewed, the name is removed from the registry and becomes available to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. |
The last row deserves a moment’s thought before the hosting is switched off. A name that lapses is open to anyone eligible to register it, and auDA says securing a domain name after it has expired is not guaranteed. Where the name is going to a buyer of the business, transferring a .au domain sets out the process.
auDA’s rules also cover a licence held by a person who dies: the executor of the estate becomes responsible for it, and must transfer or cancel it within a reasonable timeframe, having regard to the person’s wishes.
03The site and its services
business.gov.au’s list of loose ends, quoted in full and in its order:
“When you close your business, you may also need to:
- disconnect your phone, power, water and internet
- redirect your mail through Australia Post
- close your business bank accounts
- cancel your website hosting and domain name
- shut down your social media channels
- cancel payment systems, software subscriptions and other digital platforms.”
business.gov.au, Close your business, “Tie up loose ends”
One sequencing point is this guide’s own reading rather than business.gov.au’s: the website is also where the closing message lives, and the hosting account may hold some of the business’s records and customer data. Getting the records and data out comes before the cancellation, not after it. If the hosting plan runs on a contract with renewal or exit terms, auto-renewals and contract terms covers how the law treats them.
04The records
The ATO says that if you sell or close your business during a period of review, your records can still be requested if the business is reviewed or audited. Its record-keeping rules cover records about starting, running, changing, and selling or closing a business. If a company is wound up, the ATO explains that the liquidator appointed takes control of the existing company records.
For records held on a website or in a hosted system, keeping business records through a move covers getting them out in a form the ATO can still read.
05Customer information
business.gov.au’s advice is to protect your customers’ information by securely destroying or de-identifying any customer records you do not need to keep. For a business the Privacy Act covers, APP 11.2 makes that a duty: reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information no longer needed, except where an Australian law or a court or tribunal order requires it to be kept. Read together, the records the law requires are kept, and customer records that are not needed are destroyed or de-identified. Getting your data back, and deleting it covers asking a host to confirm its copies are gone.
Sources for this sheet
- business.gov.au: Close your business
- auDA: .au Domain Administration Rules: Licensing (sections 2.11, 2.13 and 2.15)
- auDA: How to transfer your .au domain name
- auDA: How to renew your .au domain name
- ATO: Selling or closing your business, records
- ATO: Overview of record-keeping rules for business
- OAIC: APP guidelines, Chapter 11