Business Support and Accounting Services in Singapore

According to Singapore’s Companies Act, every company is required to appoint a company secretary within 6 months from the day of incorporation. As the primary officer in charge of all the secretarial matters for your company, the company secretary must be attentive to the reporting due dates and obligations that a company is required to comply by law. The statutory responsibilities include the filing of annual returns, maintenance of statutory registers and preparation of board resolutions.

The Companies Act requires every Singapore-registered company to have at least 1 resident director, who is a Singapore citizen or Permanent Resident and have a permanent local address. If a foreign shareholder of a newly incorporated company does not have a local person to act as the company’s resident director, the shareholder can take up our nominee director service. Nominee directors do not participate in the business operations but are appointed to satisfy Singapore’s regulatory requirements.

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language, which is meant for the electronic communication of business and financial data globally. The financial statements are presented in computers so that they can be retrieved from online records and transferred directly to the users such as auditors, regulators and financial analysts for various purposes. All Singapore incorporated companies (unless exempted, as per ACRA’s regulations), either unlimited or limited by shares, are required to file a full set of financial statements with ACRA in XBRL format.

A business must be GST-registered if the annual turnover exceeds SGD 1 million. If the turnover does not exceed SGD 1 million, you may still choose to apply for GST registration voluntarily after checking on the details with our dedicated team for further consideration. Subsequent to the effective date of GST registration, quarterly GST returns must be submitted within one month from the end of the accounting period. Otherwise, penalties will be imposed.

If your company’s accounts are prepared by a junior accountant or a related overseas venture’s accounting team, it is highly recommended to engage our reviewing service to identify errors and misstatement. This ensures that the accounts are completed in accordance to the accounting principles and standards, applicable in Singapore. The amounts in the final management accounts have a significant impact on the results presented in the financial statements and corporate tax computation.

According to ACRA’s regulations, a company is exempted from auditing its management accounts if the company satisfies the qualifying criteria, as set in the “small companies” concept. The preparation of unaudited financial statements (also known as compilation report) is specially meant for these companies to comply with the statutory regulations of ACRA and IRAS. They are also necessary if the company has potential investors or plans to obtain banking facilities.

Singapore’s corporate income tax rate is one of the lowest among the many countries. The flat rate of 17% is levied on the chargeable income (or the equivalent of taxable income after tax-deductible expenses and other tax adjustments). Corporate Income Tax Rebates and Tax Exemption Schemes are 2 of the several tax incentives, which greatly reduce the corporate income tax bill. To facilitate the company’s cash flow, Singapore’s tax system accepts settlement in instalments.

All self-employed persons must report the income earned from their business operations (whether sole-proprietorship or partnership) as business income, not salary. The business income is part of the total personal income which is taxed at individual income tax rates. In this respect, the precedent partner is still required to file the partnership income tax return (Form P) on behalf of the partnership even though the partnership itself does not pay taxes.

Many claim forms and unsorted receipts are received at the last minute from the employees across all departments. For verification purpose, HR department has to sort all documents and check every item on the forms against the respective receipts. Meanwhile, the HR personnel also has to attend many queries, requests or prepare regular and ad-hoc reportings. Why not pass these tedious works to us?

Smartphone has become 1 of our daily necessities. Subordinates can apply and check the leave balance via the mobile app at anytime and anywhere. Superiors can approve and decline the leave applications received at the app too. This reduces the time and printing required, as compared with the traditional methodology. The latest reports will also be available for generation at anytime and anywhere.

Under the Income Tax Act, every employer must prepare the Form IR8A and the relevant appendixes for every employee and distribute the hardcopies or declare electronically to IRAS by 1 March. When a foreign or Singapore Permanent Resident employee resigns or receives overseas posting for more than 3 months, it is the employer’s statutory responsibility to file the Form IR21 within the stipulated due date and withhold all monies due to the employee for tax clearance purpose. Being appointed as the company’s payroll agent, we will do all the works necessary to fulfill the statutory requirements.

This service is popular among the newly incorporated and small local companies or those which have the finance department located in the overseas headquarter. We are flexible to be authorised either as a transaction preparer or approver, depending on the company’s preference. Bank transactions can be performed and captured into your company’s accounts, without hiring a full-time accounts executive.

In the digital generation, scanned copies of the physical documents serve as backups or cross-border reference. Otherwise, if your company is based overseas and the mails of your Singapore-incorporated company are sent to its registered office address in Singapore, we can assist to collect them, scan and upload to your assigned cloud storage. You can access the documents at your home country. Subsequently, the originals will be returned.