The Chinese government recently announced plans to unify the current three corporate licenses (Business License, Organization Code Certificate and Tax Registration Certificate) into one Unified Business Certificate, in order to lessen the administrative burdens on companies.

Newly established companies will automatically be issued the Unified Business Certificate.

All existing companies in China should complete the license unification process by December 31, 2017.  After that date all prior licenses will become invalid.

If prior to the 31 December 2017 deadline your company anticipates applying for any changes on its business license (e.g. legal representative, registered address and registered capital amount), then a Unified Business Certificate will be issued along with approval for said change. If you foresee a change of your business license in the near future, there is no need to spend time and energy on license unification application as a separate task.

If however, no changes are anticipated, your company should file for license unification by submitting all the original licenses with one application form for license unification. The Unified Business Certificate will be issued on the same day the application is submitted. We can assist with this process if needed.

If you have any questions about this process, feel free to contact us.