New business owners and entrepreneurs may be confused and uncertain relating to compliance matters of their new company. What should I do to remain compliant? What should I keep? What actions should I take?
These are all important, and relevant questions. We’ve written this guide, specifically for you — new business owners!
First year compliance
For newly incorporated companies; fortunately, there are no compliance filings required for the first financial year end (What is my financial year end?).
Take a breather, because you can focus on starting and growing your company for the first financial year end.
Practice good document safe keeping habits.
However, it is still good practice to keep and maintain good records of documentations – as you will likely need to reference them for your accounting matters in future.
This means, you need to develop a routine and structure or system to safe keep all of your transactional documents the company has. In terms of accounting, more is usually better than less. So make sure not to lose your supporting documents!
Examples of supporting documents includes, but are not limited to:
- Bank Statements
- CPF statements
- Invoices
- Bills
- Receipts
- Any agreements such as rental tenancy agreement
- Loan Agreements
- Payslips
- Cheque Stubs
Keeping all of them on record, will greatly help your bookkeeper with preparing your company’s books. You wouldn’t want to be in a situation where you have to back track or dig out documents a couple months way back!
Timeline of annual compliance
As mentioned earlier, there are no compliance matters to attend to during the course of the first financial year end. Annual compliance would apply once the first financial year has ended.
In general, each company must comply with 2 government entities. They are:
- Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA)
- Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) (Tax Matters)
For simplicity, we will also take an example of company X, who’s incorporation date is in 1st January 2020, and first financial year end is 31st December 2020. In order of priority, the compliance for company X would be as follows.
| Compliance | Due Date | Company X Example |
|---|---|---|
| [Tax] Estimated Chargeable Income (ECI) | Within 3 months from the FYE. | 30th March 2021 |
| [ACRA] Preparation of Financial Statements | Within 5 months from the FYE. | 30th May 2021 |
| [ACRA] AGM to be held* | Within 6 months from the FYE. | 30th June 2021 |
| [ACRA] Annual Returns Filing | Within 7 months from FYE. | 30th July 2021 |
| [Tax] Form C-S / C | 30th November for the relevant Year of Assessment Period. (What is Year of Assessment?) | 30th November 2021 |
* Most small companies usually would be eligible to be exempted from holding an AGM if all shareholders have received the financial statements, and none have particularly requested for the AGM to be held.
Usually, your company secretary would be able to assist you with reminding you of the upcoming due dates, and assist you accordingly.
You may also consider engaging Leftright Corporate as your company secretary, as we use a combination of both technology and human interaction to ensure timely and appropriate filing of your company’s compliance.
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