Tax Calendar Philippines: BIR Filing Deadlines by Month, Quarter and Year, Plus the AFS and SEC GIS

Tax Calendar Philippines: Build One the Moment You Register

A common misconception among newly established owners is that once you hold your SEC certificate and BIR tax number, the hard part is over. The opposite is true: the moment registration completes is the moment ongoing filing obligations begin. Philippine tax and corporate governance filings fall due on staggered frequencies, some monthly, some quarterly, some annually, and the deadlines do not line up neatly.

Miss any single deadline and BIR (the tax authority) or SEC (the corporate regulator) will typically impose penalties and surcharges; sustained neglect can affect your company's standing and even its registration status. So the first thing to do after setup is to plot every filing node into a compliance calendar with reminders ahead of each due date. Rather than scrambling afterward, let the Yixing compliance team watch the timeline for you from day one.

A calendar that actually works has to hold three sources at once, and dropping any one of them is how companies get caught:

• BIR — monthly, quarterly and annual returns, each form with its own due date.
• SEC — the audited financial statements and the General Information Sheet. AFS filing dates are staggered by the last digit of your SEC registration number, and the GIS follows the date of your own annual stockholders' meeting. Neither is a single national deadline.
• Your local government — the Mayor's Permit and barangay clearance renewals, clustered in January.

Then add the layer people forget because it is not BIR at all: employer registration and monthly remittances to SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG. They come from the same payroll data and they carry their own penalties. Put all four categories on one calendar, with a reminder a week before each due date, and you have made the cheapest hour of investment available after incorporation. Every date below is the standard statutory timing; confirm against current BIR, SEC and local government issuances, which do change.

Monthly Filings: Withholding on Compensation, Expanded Withholding and Monthly VAT

Monthly is the highest-frequency tier and the one most often missed through oversight. Common monthly BIR filing requirements include:

• Withholding tax on compensation (Form 1601C): as an employer, you file and remit the income tax withheld from staff salaries each month.
• Expanded / final withholding tax (Form 0619-E / 0619-F): monthly remittance of tax withheld on payments such as rent and professional fees.
• Monthly VAT (Form 2550M, where applicable): VAT-registered businesses report VAT on the month's sales.

The moment you hire staff, withholding on compensation almost always applies; if you also pay landlords or consultants, withholding tax is triggered too. Monthly filings interlock, so a single missed month leaves your quarterly and annual summaries out of balance, and the trouble snowballs.

Standard due dates for a calendar-year company:

• 1601-C (withholding on compensation) — on or before the 10th of the following month, with the December period generally moved to 15 January.
• 0619-E (monthly expanded withholding remittance) — for the first two months of each quarter, by the 10th of the following month. The third month is not remitted separately; it rolls into the quarterly 1601-EQ.
• eFPS filers — staggered by industry group, a few days later than manual filing. Use BIR's group table rather than assuming the 10th.
• SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG — each agency runs its own remittance schedule, some grouped by employer number or business name. Do not assume the three fall on the same day.

One rule that changed and still appears wrongly on older checklists: under Section 37 of the TRAIN Law (RA 10963), VAT returns have been filed quarterly since 1 January 2023. The monthly VAT return, Form 2550M, was discontinued; only the quarterly 2550Q remains. If your compliance list still says "file 2550M monthly", the list is out of date.

The real risk in the monthly tier is not the amount — it is the broken chain. Miss one month and the quarterly and annual summaries no longer reconcile, while the year-end 1604-C, the 2316 certificates and the audit all work backwards from monthly data. A single overlooked month typically surfaces ten months later as "the audit cannot be completed".

Quarterly Filings: Quarterly VAT, Income Tax and Withholding Summaries

After each quarter closes, a set of summarizing returns falls due:

• Quarterly VAT (Form 2550Q): reconciles output and input VAT for the quarter.
• Quarterly income tax (Form 1702Q): the corporation prepays income tax on the quarter's taxable income.
• Quarterly withholding summary (Form 1601-EQ / 1601-FQ): a consolidated return of expanded / final withholding tax for the quarter.

The core logic of quarterly filing is reconciliation, and it is built on your monthly data. Keep the monthly bookkeeping clean and the quarterly stage goes smoothly. The regular corporate income tax rate is 25%, with 20% available to qualifying smaller companies; VAT is 12%. Which rate applies depends on company size and taxable income and must be worked out case by case.

Standard quarterly due dates:

• 2550Q (quarterly VAT) — within 25 days after the close of the quarter.
• 2551Q (percentage tax, for non-VAT registered taxpayers) — within 25 days after the close of the quarter.
• 1601-EQ / 1601-FQ (quarterly withholding returns) — by the last day of the month following the close of the quarter, with the applicable alphalists and schedules attached.
• 1702Q (corporate quarterly income tax) — within 60 days after the close of each of the first three quarters.
• 1701Q (self-employed and professionals) — first quarter 15 May, second 15 August, third 15 November.

Three details that catch people out. VAT and percentage tax are alternatives, determined by your registration type and turnover threshold — filing both, or neither, are equally common errors. Quarterly income tax is a prepayment, not a settlement; the annual 1702 is the final reckoning and carries the excess forward. And nil returns still have to be filed — "no business this quarter, nothing to file" is the most expensive misunderstanding in the whole calendar, because the penalty attaches to the failure to file rather than to the tax due.

If your fiscal year is not the calendar year, shift every quarterly and annual date by the same offset — the annual income tax return, for instance, falls on the 15th day of the fourth month following the close of the fiscal year. This is where subsidiaries that adopt a foreign parent's year-end most often miscalculate.

Annual Filings: Income Tax, Withholding Summaries and the Statutory Audit (AFS)

The annual tier is the heaviest on the calendar and usually the most time-consuming:

• Annual income tax return (Form 1702): the final reckoning of the fiscal year's taxable income, settling any balance due or refund.
• Annual withholding summaries (Form 1604-C / 1604-E): consolidated reporting of the year's withholding on compensation and expanded withholding, with certificates issued to employees and suppliers.
• Statutory Audited Financial Statements (AFS): financial statements audited by an independent CPA, filed to both BIR and SEC. This is the centerpiece of annual compliance and needs your books prepared months in advance.

The AFS rests on clean bookkeeping across the whole year. If your records are scattered or long-neglected, you may find the audit simply cannot be completed near the deadline. Because annual filing involves tax computation and audit coordination, it is best handled by a professional compliance team.

Laid out in order, January to April is the densest stretch of the year:

1. 20 January — local business permit renewal and local business tax, which may alternatively be paid quarterly (20 January, 20 April, 20 July, 20 October).
2. 30 January — annual inventory list, for taxpayers required to submit one.
3. 31 January — 1604-C (annual withholding on compensation) and 1604-F (annual final withholding); the same date is the deadline to issue Form 2316 to every employee.
4. 28 February — submission of the 2316 certificates to BIR.
5. 1 March — 1604-E (annual expanded withholding) with its alphalist.
6. 15 April — Form 1702, the annual corporate income tax return for calendar-year companies, with the CPA-audited financial statements attached. The individual annual return, 1701, shares this date.
7. After 15 April — file the BIR-stamped AFS with the SEC, on the date assigned to the last digit of your SEC registration number under that year's published schedule.

The order is not interchangeable. The AFS goes to BIR first with the income tax return and is stamped as received; only then does it go to the SEC on your assigned date. Filing with the SEC first gets it returned, and once your window in the staggered schedule closes, penalties accrue with the delay. Because the audit itself takes weeks to months, the practical rule is to close the prior year's books and hand them to the auditor as the first task of the new year — not to start looking for an accountant in March.

Corporate Governance: SEC GIS and Business Permit Renewal

Beyond tax, the corporate governance layer has fixed annual actions that companies fixated on BIR alone tend to overlook:

• SEC General Information Sheet (GIS): an annual update to the SEC of stockholders, directors, registered address and other core company details.
• Business permit (Mayor's Permit) renewal: renewed annually with your city government, typically in January, with penalties that accrue if you are late.

These run in parallel with tax filings and do not substitute for one another. January is often a pinch point where permit renewal stacks on top of several early-year returns; if you are also handling staff hiring and employment compliance at the same time, a thin team can easily drop the ball, which is exactly why a calendar planned ahead pays off.

The GIS deadline follows your own meeting. A stock corporation files the GIS with the SEC within 30 calendar days from the date of its annual stockholders' meeting. Which means that holding the meeting in the same month each year fixes your GIS deadline; conversely, letting the meeting slip to December pushes the GIS into the year-end crush. Changes to directors, officers, shareholders, registered address or capital usually require their own filing when they happen, not just an update at the next annual GIS.

Permit renewal is a separate chain that substitutes for nothing else. It typically runs barangay clearance first, then the Mayor's Permit, supported by recent financial statements or returns, the lease, and fire and sanitary clearances — requirements differ city by city, so work from your own LGU's current notice.

January is where thin teams break. Permit renewal, 1604-C, the 2316 certificates, the inventory list and the December withholding remittance all land together. The workable fix is to move half of January's work into the preceding November and December — closing the books and reconciling employee records in particular can both be done early.

Maintaining Books of Accounts and Catch-up Bookkeeping

Everything above rests on your Books of Accounts. The Philippines requires companies to maintain BIR-registered books that faithfully record every receipt and disbursement. These books are not just a bookkeeping tool; they are the core basis for tax audits and the annual statutory audit.

In practice, many companies get so busy in their early stage that bookkeeping is neglected, only to find the records blank when a return or audit is due. That is when catch-up bookkeeping is needed, reconstructing months or even years of vouchers into the books and then filing the outstanding returns on that basis. Catch-up gets more expensive and harder the longer it is delayed, so the earlier you act, the more you save. If your books have already fallen behind, have Yixing scope the catch-up first, close the gap, then fold everything into a normal compliance calendar.

Two rules that have changed and are worth updating in your head:

• The annual registration fee is gone. The Ease of Paying Taxes Act (RA 11976) removed the PHP 500 annual registration fee formerly due each January, and also classified taxpayers by size and relaxed where returns may be filed and paid. You can delete that line from an old checklist — but the Certificate of Registration itself must still be kept valid and displayed as required.
• Manual books do not have to be re-registered every year. They may continue in use until the pages are consumed, at which point a new set is registered. Computerised and loose-leaf books have their own separate registration and submission requirements.

How long must you keep the records? Current BIR rules require books of accounts and supporting documents to be preserved for ten years from the filing deadline, with hard copies retained for the first five years and electronic copies permitted for the remainder. That single rule decides how much archive space your office needs and which boxes cannot be thrown out when you move.

How to scope catch-up work sensibly: sort the past periods into four buckets — invoiced and filed, invoiced but not filed, collected without invoicing, and no record at all. The middle two are where both the cost and the audit exposure sit. Establishing the scope first, then deciding how many years and which tax types to reconstruct, is far cheaper than announcing that everything will be redone. And if a Letter of Authority has already been issued, the sequence is different: the deadlines in that notice come first, and a compliance team or tax counsel should be engaged before anyone starts rebuilding ledgers.