Director ID

Director ID is your unique identifier to link you to all the directorships you hold in Australia. It is a new initiative of the government to eliminate fraudulent directorships, and hopefully will reduce red tape in updating your details across all companies.

If you are already a director and do not have one, you are overdue. The transitional deadline for directors appointed on or before 31 October 2021 was 30 November 2022, with the registrar applying a non-enforcement approach until 14 December 2022. Both are long past. ASIC now prosecutes: directors have been fined for failing to hold one. Apply anyway – being late is a smaller problem than staying unregistered.

If you are taking on a new directorship, you must apply before you are appointed. That has been the rule since 5 April 2022. The old "within 28 days of appointment" concession applied only to directors appointed between 1 November 2021 and 4 April 2022, and it no longer exists. Do not accept an appointment first and sort the ID out afterwards – the obligation is one of strict liability.

Failing to hold one when required is a strict liability offence carrying up to 60 penalty units – $21,840 for offences committed from 1 July 2026, when the penalty unit rose to $364. ASIC can also disqualify someone from managing corporations for up to three years where they do not apply after being directed to.

From 1 July 2027, companies must give directors' IDs to ASIC through their company reporting, and a director has to give theirs to the company within seven days of appointment. A missing ID stops being a private problem for the director and becomes a filing problem for the company.

One date that trips people up: directors under the CATSI Act were on a different timetable – apply before appointment from 1 November 2022, with the transitional deadline 30 November 2023, a year later than the Corporations Act dates above.

Applications can be made:

• online – you need to have your myGovID set up
• over the phone – 13 62 50 or +61 2 6216 3440
• paper lodgements – from our experience, it takes 14 days to get it

During the application, you will be asked to verify your identity. Paper lodgements require certified copies of the documents.