To be struck off means a regulatory body or government agency has formally removed a name from an official register. For a professional, it is the removal of their name from the roll of practitioners authorized to work in that field. For a company, it is removal from the register of active businesses maintained by the state. The phrase is standard in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries. In the United States the same actions carry different labels — disbarment for lawyers, license revocation for doctors and other licensed professionals, and administrative dissolution for companies — but the consequences line up closely.
In its original UK sense, a solicitor who commits serious professional misconduct can be “struck off the roll” by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which has unlimited power to fine, suspend, or remove a solicitor found to have behaved unethically. Companies face a parallel process: the Registrar of Companies can strike a company from the Companies House register if it appears to have stopped trading, was registered on a false basis, or failed to maintain a valid registered office. When a UK company is struck off, its bank accounts are frozen and any remaining assets pass to the Crown.1GOV.UK. Striking Off or Dissolving a Limited Company
What It Means for a Professional
For an attorney, the U.S. equivalent of being struck off is disbarment: permanent removal from the bar, ending the authorization to practice law. State bar associations and disciplinary boards investigate complaints and, when warranted, revoke the license entirely. Common triggers include misappropriating client funds, fraud, criminal convictions, and repeated violations of the professional conduct rules.
Physicians face the same kind of action through state medical boards. Grounds for revoking a medical license include substance abuse, sexual misconduct, patient neglect, falling below the accepted standard of care, fraudulent prescribing, felony convictions, and dishonesty during the licensing process.2FSMB. About Physician Discipline The same broad categories apply across other licensed professions, each with its own regulatory board.
Removal is never instant. Regulatory bodies investigate, hold hearings, and give the professional a chance to respond before imposing sanctions. It is reserved for the most serious conduct. Lesser violations typically result in fines, mandatory education, supervised practice, or temporary suspension.
What It Means for a Company
Companies in the U.S. are removed from state registers through administrative dissolution. Unlike professional removal, this usually happens for routine bookkeeping failures rather than misconduct. The three most common triggers are failing to file an annual report, failing to pay required fees or franchise taxes, and failing to maintain a registered agent.
Before dissolving a company, the secretary of state must follow statutory procedures that include sending notice to the business and allowing a grace period to fix each violation. If the problems are not corrected in that window, dissolution moves forward. Administrative dissolution rarely comes as a true surprise; the company had warnings.
A separate and more serious path is judicial dissolution, sometimes called the “corporate death penalty.” A court orders the company dissolved after a shareholder, creditor, or the state attorney general petitions for that outcome. Grounds include fraud in the company’s formation, persistent abuse of authority, director deadlock that threatens the business, or illegal conduct. Judicial dissolution is much rarer, and harder to undo, because a court is actively forcing the company out of existence.
What Happens After a Professional Is Struck Off
A disbarred attorney or a physician whose license has been revoked cannot legally practice, period. They cannot represent clients, see patients, use protected titles, or hold themselves out as licensed. Years of education and career building are effectively wiped out, and the loss of income is immediate.
Continuing to practice after removal is a criminal offense in every state, typically charged as a misdemeanor, though some states classify it as a felony. If the former practitioner harms someone while working without authorization — injuring a patient, defrauding a client — additional charges can follow, including assault, reckless endangerment, or larceny.
The record itself is lasting. Disciplinary actions are public, and most regulatory boards maintain searchable online databases. Future employers, licensing boards in other jurisdictions, and professional organizations in adjacent fields will find the entry. Many fields that require a character evaluation treat a prior removal as disqualifying.
What Happens After a Company Is Struck Off
Removal from the register strips the company of its legal authority to do business. It cannot enter new contracts, file lawsuits, or maintain bank accounts in the company name. Existing contracts do not vanish, and that can be a trap: courts have held that losing good standing with the secretary of state can itself count as an event of default under loan agreements and other contracts that require the company to remain a legal entity in good standing. Later reinstatement does not undo a default that already occurred.
Remaining assets can pass to the state through escheatment. In the UK the rule is explicit: dissolved company assets belong to the Crown.1GOV.UK. Striking Off or Dissolving a Limited Company U.S. states have similar unclaimed property laws, with specifics that vary by jurisdiction. Bank accounts are frozen, real property title becomes clouded, and intellectual property can fall into limbo. Recovering any of it typically requires reinstatement followed by a separate claim.
Dissolution does not wipe the slate clean for directors and officers. The clearest personal exposure is for trust fund taxes — the employment taxes withheld from workers’ pay and sales taxes collected from customers. The IRS treats those as money held in trust for the government, and responsible persons who fail to pay them over can be held individually liable under federal law whether or not the company still exists. Directors who skip proper winding-down steps — paying known creditors, notifying potential claimants, setting aside reserves for anticipated claims — may lose the liability shield the corporate form was supposed to provide. Creditors can also pursue former shareholders who received distributions during dissolution, seeking to claw those payments back in proportion to ownership. The window for these claims varies by state but typically runs for several years.
Tax obligations survive dissolution. The IRS requires a final income tax return for the year the business closes, with the “final return” box checked, and corporations must file Form 966, Corporate Dissolution or Liquidation, when they adopt a resolution or plan to dissolve.3Internal Revenue Service. Closing a Business4Internal Revenue Service. About Form 966, Corporate Dissolution or Liquidation The company’s Employer Identification Number is permanent; the IRS cannot cancel an EIN, though it can deactivate the associated account once all outstanding returns are filed and all taxes owed are paid.5Internal Revenue Service. If You No Longer Need Your EIN A business that stopped filing because it assumed dissolution ended its obligations may owe years of back returns, penalties, and interest, and those must be resolved before the account can be closed or the company can reinstate.
Can You Be Reinstated
For a professional, getting the license back is extraordinarily difficult. ABA data from a single survey year showed only 67 of 674 reinstatement petitions succeeded, roughly a 10 percent rate, and most disbarred attorneys never apply at all. The ABA’s Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary Enforcement set a minimum waiting period of five years after disbarment before an attorney can even petition.6American Bar Association. Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary Enforcement – Rule 25 Individual states may require longer. The former attorney bears the burden of proving rehabilitation, good character, and fitness to practice, usually through character witnesses, documentation of any treatment for underlying issues, evidence of community involvement, and in many cases retaking the bar exam. Medical license reinstatement follows a similar pattern, often with additional training, supervised practice, or re-examination, and substance abuse cases typically require years of documented sobriety and ongoing monitoring.
For a company, reinstatement is far more achievable, because the original removal was usually administrative rather than punitive. Most states allow reinstatement through an application to the secretary of state, with no court order required, as long as the company fixes what caused the dissolution. Typical requirements include:
- Filing every overdue annual report, statement of information, or other required document.
- Paying the missed fees, late penalties, and a reinstatement filing fee.
- Appointing a registered agent if the lack of one triggered the dissolution.
- Obtaining a tax clearance certificate proving outstanding state tax obligations are resolved.
Once reinstated, most states treat the company as if it had never been dissolved, ratifying actions taken in the interim and deeming legal existence continuous from the original formation date. That fiction has limits, though. It will not undo a contractual default that occurred during the dissolution period, and third parties who relied on the dissolution may have acquired rights the company cannot override.
Deadlines matter. The window to reinstate varies by state and can run anywhere from two to five years; wait too long and the only option is forming a new entity from scratch. In the UK, Companies House allows administrative restoration within six years of dissolution, with court-ordered restoration available on a similar timeline.1GOV.UK. Striking Off or Dissolving a Limited Company Companies dissolved by court order rather than administrative action face a harder path and may need to return to the same court that ordered dissolution; success is not guaranteed.