Simplified filing of annual returns, corporate tax for businesses
TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — To help companies meet their regulatory obligations and to provide them with “greater convenience”, the filing of annual returns for some businesses will be simplified this year. Start-up businesses will also get help in filing corporate taxes.
These were announced by Ms Indranee Rajah, Senior Minister of State for Law and Finance, during the Ministry of Finance’s Committee of Supply debate in Parliament on Tuesday (March 6). The initiatives are part of the move by the ministry to harness technology to enhance digital services.
For private companies that are classified as “exempt” and “dormant relevant”, for instance, the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (Acra) will be streamlining the filing of annual returns this year.
Under the simplified process, some of the information will be “pre-filled” and the process will be cut from 24 steps to six. The change is expected to benefit 150,000 firms, Ms Indranee said.
Acra will also be providing the simplified filing service on its “Acra on the Go” mobile application. Companies will receive SMS alerts when it is time for them to file their annual returns.
For start-ups, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) will be introducing an interactive “start-up kit” for the new companies, and the initiative will be piloted for some 3,700 start-ups that are due to file their first tax returns this year. The businesses will get tailored information such as the schedule for tax-filing and follow-up actions, and automatically receive email notifications with reminders to file taxes on time.
Apart from these initiatives for businesses, efforts have been made to improve the experience in responding to citizens and making payouts to them.
For example, the GST Voucher scheme, which was introduced by the Government in 2012 to help lower-income Singaporeans with their expenses, now makes use of SMS notifications. Since last year, about 790,000 recipients, whose mobile numbers are registered under their SingPass accounts, have benefited from “timely and accessible updates”, Ms Indranee said.
“We have cut down physical letters, saving S$300,000 and 160 trees annually,” she added.
Going forward, the Government is working to automate the procurement-to-payment process, which will enable faster payments to businesses.
“We encourage businesses to issue electronic invoices when providing goods and services to the Government. A paperless and more efficient processing will result in faster payments to vendors,” she said.
From this year, all businesses that transact with the Government only need to submit their payment details once. They do not have to submit their payment details every time they transact with a different government agency.
The Government, which processes an average of two million payments to more than 23,000 companies a year, is targeting to reduce the late payment rate from 6.5 per cent to under 5 per cent, Ms Indranee said. The goal is to achieve at least 95 per cent of timely payment to businesses.
