When you register a business in Australia, whether as a sole trader, a company, or anything in between, you hand over an address. That address ends up on one or more public registers. Most people do this without thinking too hard about it, especially when they are just starting out and their home address is the obvious, free option.
This post covers what actually gets published, who can see it, what changed in February 2026, and why using a home address still carries real risks even with the new rules in place.
What goes on the public record when you register
There are two main registrations most Australian businesses deal with: the ABN through the Australian Business Register, and the company registration through ASIC if you have a Pty Ltd.
ABN registration
When you apply for an ABN, your details are added to the Australian Business Register, and some of those details are publicly searchable through ABN Lookup [Australian Business Register, abr.gov.au ]. What shows up depends on how you are structured.
If you are a sole trader operating under your own name, ASIC will only show your suburb, state, and postcode rather than your full street address if your principal place of business is your home address [ASIC, asic.gov.au/for-business/business-names ]. But the service of documents address you register is always publicly available in full, so if you use your home address as your service address, that street address is visible to anyone who searches [ASIC, asic.gov.au ].
Company registration
If you register a Pty Ltd company, you need to provide a registered office address, a principal place of business address, and the residential addresses of each director. Historically, all of this was accessible to anyone willing to pay a small fee for a company extract on ASIC Connect.
In February 2026, ASIC changed this. Director residential addresses no longer appear on publicly purchased company extracts or in free tax agent reports [Landers, landers.com.au , 2026]. This followed years of advocacy from the Australian Institute of Company Directors, which had been pushing for the change citing identity theft, cybercrime, and personal safety risks [AICD, aicd.com.au ]. The Australian Government has estimated identity crime costs around $3.1 billion each year [Jacmac, jacmac.com.au , 2026].
So director home addresses are now better protected than they were. But that does not mean using your home address is without consequence.
What the 2026 change did not fix
The February 2026 reform removed director residential addresses from company extracts. It did not change what happens to your registered office address or your principal place of business address. Those remain publicly visible [Landers, landers.com.au , 2026].
This matters because most small business owners and sole traders are not just directors, they are also the registered office. If you use your home as your company's registered office, that address is still on the public record. Anyone can search the ASIC companies register and find it.
The registered office address is the one that gets served legal documents. It is the address on ASIC correspondence. It is what shows up when a client, a competitor, a creditor, or anyone else does a basic company search. ASIC is explicit on this point: the service of documents address is always available to the public [ASIC, asic.gov.au ].
What actually happens when your home address is on the register
The most immediate issue is cold contact. Sales reps, direct mailers, and marketers regularly scrape the ASIC register and the ABR for business contact information. If your home address is on those registers, it finds its way onto lists. This is legal, and there is no way to opt out once the information is out there.
Beyond unsolicited mail, there are more serious concerns in specific situations. Directors in industries that attract conflict, such as mining, gambling, certain financial services, and sectors with activist opposition, have long flagged the risk of physical harassment when their home address appears on a public record [AICD, aicd.com.au ]. For most small business owners, this is not a daily worry, but it is worth thinking through before you make the decision.
There is also the professional image question. If someone searches your company and finds a residential street in the suburbs listed as your registered office and principal place of business, that creates a different impression than a commercial address. Whether that matters depends on your industry and who your clients are, but it is worth being deliberate about it rather than defaulting to a home address because it is the easiest option.
The specific cases where it causes the most problems
Sole traders with a service of documents address: If you register your home address as your service of documents address, that full street address is publicly visible regardless of the ABR's suburb-only rule for principal place of business. Most sole traders do not realise the distinction exists.
Company directors who use their home as the registered office: Even after the February 2026 changes, the registered office address remains public. Using your home means a publicly visible link between your company and your residential address.
Anyone running a home-based business they plan to scale: When you are just starting out, a home address feels fine. When you have clients, contractors, and competitors searching your company details two years later, you may wish you had set it up differently from the beginning. Changing your registered office later is straightforward, it involves lodging a Form 484 with ASIC, but it requires updating your details across every platform where your old address appears.
People in difficult personal situations: ASIC does allow suppression of personal details in cases where publishing the information would create a safety risk, but the bar is high and the process requires demonstrating exceptional circumstances [ABR, abr.gov.au ]. It is not a standard opt-out.
What you can use instead
The alternatives to a home address on your registration are not complicated.
A virtual address service provides a physical street address at a commercial premises that you can use as your registered office and ABN address. The provider's address appears on the public record instead of yours. For companies, the provider must meet ASIC's requirements: a physical street address, premises open to the public for a minimum of three hours each business day, and written consent from the occupier [ASIC, Corporations Act 2001, s.142].
An accountant or lawyer's address is another option. Many small businesses use their accountant's office as their registered office, which is entirely legal provided the accountant has given written consent [Sprintlaw, sprintlaw.com.au ].
A PO Box partially works for some purposes. ASIC allows a PO Box as a service of documents address for business names, which keeps your full street address off that part of the record. But a PO Box cannot be used as a company's registered office under the Corporations Act, so it does not solve the problem for Pty Ltd companies [ASIC, asic.gov.au ].
The bottom line
The February 2026 ASIC changes improved privacy for company directors by removing residential addresses from public company extracts. That is a genuine improvement. But the registered office address, the one that appears in every company search, remains public. For sole traders, the service of documents address is also fully public if it is a home address.
Using a virtual address from the day you register costs between $20 and $65 a month depending on the provider and the location. It keeps your home address off the public record entirely, presents a professional face on any company search, and costs less over a year than most people spend on business subscriptions they barely use.
If you want to see what Space Penguin offers for business address registration, [link to pricing page].