How to check a counterparty. Rating of all possible methods. Services for checking counterparties and competitors: how to find out what is hidden Public databases

The company must conduct business carefully so as not to become a victim of unscrupulous counterparties. See how to check the reliability of a counterparty quickly and conveniently, so as not to waste time and effort collecting information from many sources.

Why check your counterparty for reliability?

If a company conducts an honest business, this does not mean that tax claims can be 100% avoided. Often, a company can become a victim of fraudulent companies. However, if the budget receives less taxes, both parties to the transaction will be responsible.

In addition, it is important to check the integrity of the counterparty in order to avoid monetary loss - the risks of refusal to deduct VAT, including contract costs as expenses, etc.

Checking the counterparty for reliability will avoid the risk of holding your company liable for fraudulent transactions, as well as damage to business reputation. You can do a full check of any partner. It’s free and takes only 1 minute. Just find a company by INN, name or OGRN and create a dossier on the counterparty.

Important! When choosing a counterparty, the company is obliged to exercise due diligence and caution. If the company has not taken any action to check the reliability of the counterparty, then it will be problematic to prove its case in court.

Where are the criteria for bad faith established?

The law nowhere establishes the criteria of bad faith by which legal entities should be checked for trustworthiness. However, the company can use two sources that tax authorities will use when identifying fraudulent transactions:

1. Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation dated October 12, 2006 No. 53 “On the assessment by arbitration courts of the validity of a taxpayer receiving a tax benefit”;
2. Public criteria
   self-assessment of risks for taxpayers, used by tax authorities in the process of selecting objects for conducting on-site tax audits, approved. by order of the Federal Tax Service of Russia dated May 30, 2007 No. MM-3-06/333@.

These sources do not directly indicate what are reliable signs and what are dishonest. But a combined analysis of the information in these two documents can make it possible to draw certain conclusions about a potential counterparty and protect your company.

For example, if you are unable to obtain annual financial statements from a company, this may be a sign of bad faith, since such information is open to interested users (buyers or suppliers).

What sources to use to check the reliability of the counterparty

There is no universal source for a free full verification of a counterparty. If you have sufficient time resources, you can, in particular, obtain information from the following sources:

As you can see, there are a lot of requests that need to be made, and this is only a small part of them. If you need to check just one company, then you can do a “manual” check, checking the information on each site one by one. But if the company is large and has a large turnover and many counterparties, then such a due diligence check will take a lot of time. In addition, there is a human factor that can lead to one of these verification services being missed.

What steps will help you prove due diligence when choosing a counterparty?

The Federal Tax Service explained how to check counterparties for reliability. At a minimum, you should obtain an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and check your partner’s address for mass registration. All advice is in the letter of the tax service dated May 12, 2017 No. AS-4-2/8872. Read on for detailed verification instructions.

Step No. 1. Request an extract from the state register of legal entities for the counterparty

To check the supplier, request an extract from the register of legal entities or entrepreneurs. The document will prove that the company or individual entrepreneur is valid and working on the date of the contract. If necessary, it will help to defend expenses (resolution of the AS of the Ural District dated January 18, 2016 No. F09-10478/15).

If you build a relationship with a company that is not in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the tax authorities will consider it invalid and will deduct expenses. You will be able to defend your expenses in court only if you prove that you did not deliberately choose a bad counterparty. And the services have already been provided to you. For example, judges support companies whose employees paid for services to a non-existent hotel. Since employees could not check the presence of the company in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (resolution of the Arbitration Court of the Ural District dated August 28, 2015 No. F09-5678/15).

When a partner refuses to give an extract, request it from the inspectorate or on the tax website. For a paper statement you will have to pay 200 rubles, an electronic one is free.

Download the electronic statement from the Federal Tax Service egrul.nalog.ru. For information about unreliability, see the relevant sections of the statement, the data in which may be fictitious. For example, look for inaccurate information about the founder in the section “Information about the founders (participants) of a legal entity.” Incorrect address - in the "Address (location)" section.

Step No. 2. Check the credentials of the partner representative

Request from the counterparty a document confirming the authority of its representative. This could be a power of attorney to draw up a contract, or an individual’s passport. As well as the charter, which states who can act on behalf of the company. If the agreement with your company is signed by the general partner himself, take the protocol by which he was elected. Or the decision by which they were appointed to a position.

In addition, be sure to check whether the general manager of the counterparty is active and whether he has been removed from his position. If a disqualified employee signs the contract, the contract is considered fictitious. Controllers will cancel the expenses. And the arbitrators will agree with them (Resolution of the Federal Arbitration Court No. A64-5102/2013 dated 06/03/2014).

For the most common reasons for dismissal from a position, see the table. As a rule, the first time for such violations they are fined, and the second time they are removed from office.

Table. Reasons why directors are disqualified

To check the director, go to egrul.nalog.ru in the section “Search for information in the register of disqualified persons.” You can find a manager in the database:

By LLC name or company tax identification number;

By name and birthday of the manager.

If the director is not disqualified, the service will report “records found: 0.” If the CEO is on the suspended register, ask that the contract be signed by another employee who is not prohibited from representing the company.

Step No. 3. Punch your partner's address

Check the counterparty's address for availability at service.nalog.ru/addrfind.do. But even if the address is on the said list, it is not necessary to immediately refuse the transaction. After all, there can indeed be several companies at one address. For example, they are located in a common building. Only the office numbers differ.

Therefore, visit the counterparty’s office yourself. Take photographs of the premises, its signs, office number, signs, etc. The photographs will prove to the tax authorities that the counterparty is real. Therefore, the deal cannot be imaginary.

But the following signs indicate fictitious addresses:

The address belongs to more than 10 companies;

The counterparty is located in a business or shopping center, but has not entered the room/office number into the register; this can be verified using the partner’s statement;

The building where the partner is registered does not exist, is destroyed or demolished;

The company is registered in a government agency or a residential building or apartment;

The company’s address is listed as someone else’s store or warehouse (letter of the Federal Tax Service of Russia dated August 3, 2016 No. GD-4-14/14126@).

Step No. 4. Assess the resources for the deal

Tax authorities check whether the company has the resources to carry out its activities. Therefore, you need supporting documents.

Make photographs of your partner’s warehouse, his machines, equipment, and other fixed assets and materials. Attach papers to the counterparty case file. This way you will prove that the counterparty sells the goods and services you buy. Therefore, if a dispute arises, the arbitrators will support you (Resolution of the AC CO dated 04/05/2017 No. F10-207/2017).

Additional arguments that will prove the reality of the counterparty: 1. The counterparty paid taxes to the budget and submitted reports to the Federal Tax Service.2. The client worked and made a profit, his assets increased (resolution of the Moscow District Arbitration Court dated 03/09/2016 No. F05-1148/2016). A copy of the financial statements can be viewed on the portal gosuslugi.ru.3. You still have business letters to your partner (resolution of the Moscow District Arbitration Court dated 02/08/2017 No. F05-22343/2016).4. The counterparty has no fines, arrears on taxes and contributions. Tax officials promise to publish the first data on debts and sanctions in July. Such information will not be a tax secret (Article 102 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, order of the Federal Tax Service of Russia dated December 29, 2016 No. ММВ-7-14/729@).

Note! You can quickly check your counterparty in the system to check the reliability of your counterparty. And it’s easy to insure yourself against negative changes in data about your counterparty with the option

In this article you will learn

• How to find out that you are working with a dishonest shell company
• 5 services for checking counterparties and competitors via the Internet
• What you can find out about partners on social networks and the tax website
• What information about the counterparty will a domain name check give you?

We have selected for you the 5 most effective counterparty verification services and competitors who will help you build a business with trusted companies and not run into scammers and fly-by-night companies.

5 sites and services for checking counterparties online

1. Domain name verification

To learn what. Who is the domain registered to – a legal entity or an individual; in the latter case – last name, first name, patronymic and contact telephone number of the person; where the site is located (cheap hosting or your own server on a good site). The domain registration date allows us to conclude how long the company has been operating. If the counterparty has been in business for 10 years, then the domain cannot be registered a month ago.

2. Public databases

To learn what. By entering the last name and first name of the person you are interested in, you can find out his date of birth, address (as well as the names of everyone registered at this address), telephone number. Keep in mind that outdated information is often found in public databases. For example, it may contain information about the CEO's car, which he sold a long time ago. However, based on this, it is already possible to conclude what property he had or has.

3. Contractor verification service - paid specialized databases

To learn what. Details of the counterparty, information about registration, licenses, company management, financial statements, etc. For example, the Spark system, depending on how much you pay, offers more or less detailed data. For 300 rubles you will receive a brief report about the company, including registration data, information about management and founders, and contact information. For 350 rubles – the balance of the enterprise. For 1,350 rubles - a full report, including data on the company structure, information on co-owners, subsidiaries, and financial indicators for several years. And an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities is provided as a bonus when requesting any information.

4. Checking counterparties on the Federal Tax Service website

To learn what. Information on registration, reorganization, liquidation of companies, information on changes in constituent documents. Here you can check whether your counterparty is a shell company.

We have counted 28 popular online services with which you can collect information about a company. We realized that you can’t do it with just one service, and we compiled a rating to simplify your work. The article contains two detailed tables with the pros and cons of resources.

The first table shows the most popular paid services,

the difference in price is not always obvious from the proposed functionality. Expensive services have a wide range of functions, but in order to make sure whether it is possible to cooperate with a counterparty, basic functions are often sufficient. All paid services have them.

If you need to choose a counterparty for cooperation, then the functionality of inexpensive services is sufficient. You will have to pay more for extended data. Below are examples of functionality that, in the opinion of the editors, distinguishes the services from each other.

The most expensive services are SPARK and Kommersant, they have all possible registers. In SPARK, in addition, you can check any company registered not only in Russia, but also in the countries of the former CIS. This is the only service that finds foreign owners of Russian legal entities and builds chains of relationships based on them. Kommersant contains information about companies from Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

In “Contour Focus” and “Kasebook”, in addition to basic functions, there is a register of pledges of movable property, a history of changes in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, and bankruptcy messages.

“Kasebook” and “Check” are more focused on lawyers. For example, “Kasebook” makes it possible to track changes in court cases in real time and assign a person responsible for the case. “Check” is the only service that automatically prepares a due diligence report, which can be taken to court as evidence in tax cases.

“Contour” and “Check” are the most convenient to use; conclusions from all registers are collected on one page.

General disadvantage of free services:

information on each counterparty must be collected bit by bit. At a minimum, the organization must be checked for five services, and preferably all at once. Each resource also has its own shortcomings. If you don’t take them into account, you will draw the wrong conclusions. These disadvantages are discussed in the second table. The main thing in the article Hide

Paid services

The main thing in the article Hide Free registries