Accounting & Audit for Singapore Company

Many years of experience in servicing various organizations and the experience of our employees allows us to solve any professional tasks with maximum benefit for our customers.

Since self-accounting takes a lot of time, and it is expensive to maintain a full-time accountant, we can offer you both one-time services and full professional accounting support for your company.

Qualified personnel who are ready to take care of the bookkeeping and tax accounting of your foreign company, as well as cooperation with independent auditors and with the tax authorities of other states at your disposal.

General accounting information for Singapore Companies

Every Singapore company shall cause to be kept such accounting and other records as will sufficiently explain the transactions and financial position of the company and enable true and fair financial statements and any documents required to be attached thereto to be prepared from time to time, and shall cause those records to be kept in such manner as to enable them to be conveniently and properly audited.

The accounting records must contain daily entries of all sums of money received and expended by the company, and the matters in respect of which the receipt and expenditure takes place and a record of the company’s assets and liabilities.

If the monthly number of your accounting transactions is medium or more than medium, then we strongly recommend that you keep monthly accounting in order to keep your books in order. However, if the number of monthly financial transactions is relatively small, you can keep accounting on a quarterly or annual basis.

The annual financial statements for a financial year must give a true and fair view of the financial position of the company as at the end of the financial year.

Financial statements should include:

• Statement of Comprehensive Income (i.e. Income Statement),
• Statement of Financial Position (i.e. Balance Sheet),
• Cash flow statement and
• Report on changes in the composition of own funds.

The Financial statements must be compiled in accordance with Singapore Financial Reporting Standards (SFRS), which are fully converged with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

The company’s first financial year starts on the company’s date of incorporation and ends on the last day of the company’s first financial year. A Singapore company’s first financial year must not be longer than 18 months unless the Registrar on the application of the company otherwise approves.

All subsequent financial years starts immediately after the end of the previous financial year and ends on the last day of a period of 12 months.

It is important to note that dormant Singapore companies exempted from duty to prepare financial statements.

In accordance with the Companies Act (Cap. 50), a company is considered ‘dormant’ if it has had no accounting transactions during the accounting period.

In accordance with the current corporate legislation, the financial statements of all companies registered in Singapore shall be duly audited.

The exceptions are ‘small’ companies. A company is a ‘small’ company from a financial year if:

1. it is a private company throughout the financial year; and
2. it satisfies any 2 of the following criteria for each of the 2 financial years immediately preceding the financial year:

• the revenue of the company for each financial year does not exceed SGD 10.000.000;
• the value of the company’s total assets at the end of each financial year does not exceed SGD 10.000.000;
• it has at the end of each financial year not more than 50 employees.

Dormant companies are also exempt from audit.

Please connect your consultant on the necessity of an audit and the volume of financial statements.

We provide the following accounting services:

• Inspection of the provided documents for completeness and compliance with the company’s business activities;
• formation of a set of supporting documents to be provided to auditor; for the company’s archive;
• preliminary assessment of the financial result and forecast of the amount of liabilities for corporate tax, if any;
• preparation of accounts, formation of profit and loss statement and balance sheet in accordance with SFRS and IAS / IFRS and corporate legislation (Companies Act (Cap. 50));
• preparation and submission of accounting statements based on the provided supporting documents;
• by additional client’s request:
  • keeping accounting records of the company with the provision of interim financial results on a monthly, quarterly or semi-annual basis.

Consolidated financial statements

The directors of a company that is a parent company at the end of its financial year must cause to be made consolidated financial statements which complies with the requirements of the Accounting Standards and gives a true and fair view of the matters of the company.

Parent companies are considered to be companies with more than 50% ownership in its subsidiaries. There are cases when a subsidiary is considered to be a company with a 50% ownership interest in it or less than 50% if it is controlled by the company. The Company controls the subsidiary if the following conditions are met:

• the company is able to manage the financial and operational policies of the subsidiary;
• the company has the ability to remove or appoint the majority of the members of the board of directors of the subsidiary;
• the company has a majority of votes at the meetings of the board of directors of the subsidiary.

As an exception, a company does not need to prepare consolidated financial statements if it is a subsidiary of an investment entity.

SFRS also exempt a parent from presenting consolidated financial statements if its holding company produces consolidated financial statements available for public use.

We also provide services for the preparation of consolidated financial statements for a group of companies, if this is required in accordance with the standards of The Companies Act (Cap. 50)) or in accordance with your request.

When preparing consolidated financial statements, if necessary, you can also use our services to audit the operations of subsidiaries registered in other jurisdictions.

Reporting deadlines

Section 201(1) and (3) of the Companies Act (“CA”) requires the directors of a company to present a profit and loss account and a balance sheet for the company at the end of the financial year at its Annual General Meeting.

After the end of the financial year, it is necessary to prepare the company’s financial statements and approve it by the directors at the Annual General Meeting (AGM). The first AGM must be held within 18 months from the date of registration of the Singapore company. All subsequent meetings must be held no later than 6 months from the end of the financial year.

Thus, Singapore companies are given 6 months to prepare annual financial statements and approve it.

The annual report (Annual Return) must be submitted by each Singapore company, regardless of whether it submits the financial statements or not. As part of the Annual Return, information about the company’s officers, registered address and auditors (if applicable) is also submitted. The Annual Return must be submitted no later than one month after the AGM (or a signed decision that the AGM was decided not to be held).

Therefore, companies must prepare financial statements, approve them and submit their annual report no later than 7 months after the end of the financial year.

The overdue filing of Annual Return is subject to a late filing fee.

You are advised to refer to your consultant in order for him to orient you on individual deadlines of your company for filing due date of the Annual Return.

Tax reporting

In addition to annual financial statements a Singapore company must submit tax return to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) before November 30.

Singapore uses the tax base of the previous year, that is, the profit for the financial year ending in the previous year serves as the basis for filing a tax return in the current year.

After filing a tax return, within about one month, the Inland Revenue Authority sends a Notice of Tax Assessment, which usually fixes the amount of income tax payable that the company indicated in its tax return. If there is no tax payable, the tax service will send a notification with a zero amount.

The notification contains the deadline by which the tax must be paid – usually 2-3 weeks are given for this. If the company has not paid the tax on time, then a repeated notification will be sent to its name with an accrued fine in the amount of 5% of the amount of tax payable.

As a general rule, companies that do not operate in Singapore and do not derive income from Singapore are not subject to taxation in Singapore.

In order to determine whether a company can be considered to be operating outside Singapore, the Inland Revenue Authority, as a rule, wants to receive confirmation that:

− the company does not have a functioning office or representative office in Singapore;

– Singapore cannot be considered a place of making business decisions, contacts and negotiations with counterparties, concluding contracts, or a place of mutual settlements;

− the company does not have assets or property in Singapore from which the company derives income;

− as well as other information that confirms the absence of activity in Singapore.

For all companies operating in Singapore, the income tax rate is 17%. At the same time, the country has a system of various tax discounts for local companies.

Directors of Singapore companies are personally responsible for compliance with the annual requirements for filing declarations. Failure to comply with the requirements and deadlines established by law is a violation and may result in fines or prosecution.

We are ready to assist you in the preparation of calculations of the estimated profit for the current year as well as the assessment of tax liabilities for corporation tax and other taxes.

Our services

We provide a full range of services related to the preparation of accounting and tax reports, audit and submission of audited statements to the public authorities of Singapore, as well as accounting, tax and administrative support of the existing offices of our clients’ companies in Singapore.

Having partnerships with a wide range of agents, we have acquired a unique practice of cooperation through a network of partners on the issues of our clients’ companies with government institutions, such as Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and others.

Get advice before getting started

Since Singapore does not belong to offshore jurisdictions, and a Singapore company is obliged to submit reports and in some cases pay taxes on a regular basis in accordance with the procedure established by law, before starting the registration of a Singapore company, we recommend that you get advice from lawyers and auditors regarding the subsequent administration of the company.

Basic fees for our services

SERVICES	PRICE (EUR)[1]
Yearly accounting services
Preparation and submission of Dormant Company Report (for companies that did not operate in the reporting period)	1.650
Preparation and submission of reports for a company that has started operating	100-400 per hour
Additional services
Consultations, communication with auditors and government agencies	100-400 per hour

[1] The price is shown without VAT. UAE VAT rate – 5%.