How to File IR8A: A Singapore Employer's Income-Reporting Guide

Form IR8A is the annual return of each employee's earnings that every Singapore employer must prepare by 1 March, covering the previous calendar year. You complete one for every employee, add Appendix 8A for benefits-in-kind and Appendix 8B for share gains where they apply, and — if you employ five or more people — file it electronically through the Auto-Inclusion Scheme rather than on paper.

Last reviewed 4 June 2026 · Source: IRAS.

What IR8A is, and the forms around it

IR8A reports what you paid an employee over the year — salary, bonus, allowances, director's fees, and the deductions you made — so IRAS can assess their income tax. It is a declaration, not a payment. Most employees need nothing beyond the IR8A itself, but three companion forms cover specific situations (IRAS).

Form	Covers	When you need it
IR8A	Salary, bonus, allowances, CPF, deductions	Every employee, every year
Appendix 8A	Benefits-in-kind (housing, car, and similar)	Employee received non-cash benefits
Appendix 8B	Gains from shares or share options (ESOP/ESOW)	Employee had a taxable share event
IR8S	Excess CPF contributions	Abolished from YA 2026 — see below

The acronyms hide a simple split: IR8A is cash pay, Appendix 8A is non-cash perks, Appendix 8B is equity.

Who you file for, and who you don't

You file IR8A for everyone employed under a contract of service — full-time, part-time, and yourself if you draw a salary as a director (IRAS). Year of Assessment 2026 reports calendar-year 2025 earnings.

You do not file for a genuine contractor. Someone engaged under a contract for service — a freelancer invoicing you — reports their own income to IRAS, and you issue no IR8A for them (IRAS). It is the same contract-of-service test that decides CPF and the Skills Development Levy.

Mid-year joiners and leavers are still in scope: report whatever a person earned while employed by you that year, even if they were on the payroll for only a month. Director's fees are the edge case worth remembering — they go on IR8A even though they carry no CPF, because the fee is still employment income IRAS wants reported.

The deadline, and how you file it

The deadline is 1 March every year, and there is no extension for the unprepared. How you file depends on your size.

With five or more employees, you must submit electronically through AIS — IRAS does not take paper from you, and the figures pre-fill straight into each employee's tax return (IRAS). Under five employees, AIS is voluntary; opt out and you instead hand each employee a hard-copy IR8A by 1 March for them to file themselves. Whether AIS is compulsory for your business is set out in our guide to whether AIS is mandatory.

The AIS submission window opens in early January, so there is no reason to wait for the deadline — submitting in January leaves room to catch a validation error before 1 March. Late or absent filing is an offence under the Income Tax Act 1947, so 1 March is the date to protect.

What goes on the IR8A itself

The core form captures the full year's pay, item by item — not just basic salary. IRAS wants every cash component the employment produced, and just as importantly, it wants the non-cash and equity items kept off IR8A and onto their own appendices.

Include on IR8A	Keep off IR8A
Gross salary, wages, overtime	Reimbursed business expenses (actual receipts)
Bonus and Annual Wage Supplement	Employer's CPF contributions
Fixed allowances — transport, meal, cash housing	Benefits-in-kind (go on Appendix 8A)
Commissions and director's fees	Share gains (go on Appendix 8B)
Gratuities, ex-gratia and retirement payouts	Contractor invoices (they self-report)

Amounts are reported with the cents truncated, not rounded (IRAS). You also report the employee's own compulsory CPF contributions on the form — IRAS uses them to work out that employee's CPF relief, so the figure feeds their tax computation, not only your records (IRAS).

Get the bonus timing right: a bonus is reported against the year the employee became entitled to it, which is not always the year you actually paid it — a frequent source of returns that do not match what the employee expects.

Appendix 8A: reporting benefits-in-kind

Give an employee a non-cash benefit — accommodation, a company car, or a cheap loan — and its taxable value goes on Appendix 8A, filed alongside the IR8A (IRAS). The valuation rules are fixed by IRAS, so there is no estimating involved.

Benefit	How IRAS values it
Employer-leased housing	Rent paid by employer + 10% of furniture and fittings − rent paid by employee
Employer-owned housing	Annual Value + 10% of furniture and fittings − rent paid by employee
Company car (employer pays petrol)	(Cost of the car ÷ 10) + petrol cost paid by the employer
Company car (employee pays petrol)	(Cost of the car ÷ 10) + (private mileage × $0.55)

Worked example: a company car costing $100,000 with petrol paid by you is valued at $100,000 ÷ 10 = $10,000 a year, plus the petrol — so a taxable benefit north of $10,000 lands on the employee's Appendix 8A even though no cash changed hands (IRAS).

Staff loans are narrower. A deemed-interest benefit applies only to directors, substantial shareholders, and employees who control the company, and only on concessionary loans. IRAS sets the deemed rate at the 3-month compounded SORA plus 1.5 percentage points, refreshed every 1 March and 1 September — so check the current rate before you value the benefit, rather than reusing last year's (IRAS).

Appendix 8B: gains from shares and share options

If an employee gained from your share scheme — share options (ESOP) or share awards (ESOW) — that gain is reported on Appendix 8B, separately from the IR8A salary lines (IRAS). The taxable moment depends on the instrument.

Instrument	Taxed when
Share options (ESOP)	Exercised
Share awards (ESOW), no vesting	Granted
Share awards (ESOW), with vesting	Vested
Any scheme with a selling moratorium	The moratorium lifts

The gain is the open-market value at that moment minus what the employee paid, multiplied by the quantity. Worked example: an employee exercises options over 10,000 shares at a $1 strike when the market value is $3, so the taxable gain is ($3 − $1) × 10,000 = $20,000, reported on Appendix 8B for the year of exercise (IRAS).

One trap catches foreign and PR staff: if they cease Singapore employment, IRAS applies a "deemed exercise" — taxing the unrealised gain as though the options were exercised on their last day (IRAS). Singapore Citizens are not subject to deemed exercise; they are taxed only on actual exercise or vesting.

After you submit: fixing an AIS return

Submit through AIS and the correction rules matter as much as the original filing. AIS distinguishes two kinds of resubmission, and they are not interchangeable (IRAS):

• A Revision replaces the employee's entire record — use it to correct an error in what you first filed.
• An Amendment changes only the specific fields you name — use it for an incremental update after a revision.

Send a Revision when you meant an Amendment and you overwrite, and effectively zero out, every field you did not re-enter. So decide which one the situation calls for before you submit — an employee's pre-filled tax return moves with whatever you last sent, errors included.

What your employees do with it

Once your AIS submission lands, IRAS pre-fills each employee's income tax return with the figures you reported — they do not key their salary in at all. They log in during tax season, check that what you filed matches their own records, add anything outside the employment (rental income, a side trade), claim their reliefs against the income you reported, and file by the April individual deadline (IRAS).

That is why an accurate IR8A matters beyond your own compliance: an error in your submission becomes an error in your employee's tax bill, and the query lands back on you. File it right and tax season is, for most of your staff, a five-minute confirmation.

When a foreign employee leaves: tax clearance (IR21)

IR8A is the annual return, but a non-Singaporean leaving mid-year triggers a second, sharper duty. When a foreign or Permanent Resident employee ceases employment, goes on an overseas posting, or plans to leave Singapore for more than three months, you must seek tax clearance by filing Form IR21 — at least one month before their last day (IRAS).

You also have to withhold all monies due to them — final salary, leave pay, allowances, reimbursements, gratuities, lump sums — from the moment you know they are leaving, and hold it until IRAS issues clearance (IRAS). Cannot withhold and did not explain why on the IR21? You can be made personally liable for the tax the employee owes.

The penalty for not filing, or filing late, is a fine of up to $5,000 — the same ceiling as a missed AIS submission (IRAS). Singapore Citizens sit outside this entirely; tax clearance is a foreign-and-PR rule. So a departing Work Permit, S Pass or Employment Pass holder needs both their year-end IR8A figures and an IR21 filed a month ahead — and the IR21 is the one whose deadline arrives before they walk out the door.

Keep your IR8A records

Keep your payroll and IR8A records for at least five years — IRAS can ask you to substantiate any figure you reported, and the benefit valuations and deemed-interest workings are exactly what an audit asks to see (IRAS). A car valuation with no calculation kept behind it is a finding waiting to happen.

Store the submission confirmations too, not just the inputs. The confirmation is your proof you filed by 1 March if the date is ever questioned, and five years comfortably matches how long IRAS expects business records to be kept — so records that outlast the employee are the ones that protect you.

IR8S is gone from YA 2026

Form IR8S, previously used to report excess CPF contributions, is abolished from Year of Assessment 2026 (IRAS). Those excess amounts are now reported within the IR8A itself.

If your prior-year process produced an IR8S, drop it — there is nothing separate left to file.

Common IR8A mistakes

Four recur. Filing an IR8A for a contractor who should self-report, which declares income that was never yours to report. Putting a bonus in the wrong year, when entitlement and payment fall in different years. Forgetting Appendix 8A for a benefit you think of as ordinary — a company car or staff housing is taxable even when it feels like part of the furniture. And letting a foreign employee leave without an IR21, which leaves you holding their unpaid tax.

Before 1 March, list every person who drew anything from you last year, split employees from contractors, and flag who received a non-cash benefit or a share gain. That one list tells you exactly which forms each person needs — and whether AIS is doing the filing for you. If you are setting payroll up from scratch, your first CPF submission feeds the same employee data this return reports at year-end. Get that list right and IR8A is bookkeeping, not a year-end scramble.