ACRA cuts firms' tax filing length to 6 steps

The new process will potentially benefit 150,000 companies.

In 2018, the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) will reduce the length of private companies’ process of filing annual returns from 24 steps to six steps, Senior Minister of State for Finance Indranee Rajah announced in a Committee Supply Debate.

Rajah said that under the simplified process, some of the information will be prefilled.

ACRA will also be providing the simplified filing service on its “ACRA On The Go” mobile app. When it is time to file returns, companies will be prompted by an SMS with a link to the mobile app.

According to Rajah, this will potentially benefit 150,000 companies.

To complement the initiative, the Inland Revenue Authority Of Singapore (IRAS) is introducing a kit for startups which contains information such as a tax-filing timeline and follow-up actions, and automatically sends email notifications with reminders on filing due dates. IRAS will pilot this with around 3,700 startups that are due to file their first tax return this year.