Income Tax Submission - preparing IR8A

Income tax is an amount payable to the government based on a certain percentage of the salary earned by the individual. In Singapore, companies have to provide the earnings details of each employee in the company so that they could file their income tax returns. The form is called IR8A or IR8C, depending on the type of employment the employee has with the company. This salary in this form has to be endorsed by the company and usually carries the Managing Director's signature. The payroll manager usually has to prepare the summary as a supporting document so that the managing director is assured that the forms are prepared with due diligence and he can safely endorse on the forms. The payroll manager is likely to save each month salary details in separate worksheets to facilitate tracking. But that created a new headache for him because he will have problem consolidating the monthly salaries for the IR8A form. And without a good tool to help him, this is what a payroll manager will do.

1. Identify the list of names to prepare the IR8A forms. This requires him to go through each form and pick up the names of the employees being paid for the month. Whether he consolidates the details from the first month or the last month makes no difference. Because the employee list will change in each month with either resignations or new employment. And in the process of compiling the list, he may missed out one or 2 employees who have resigned from the company in the past one year.
2. Next he would have to go to the worksheets, one month for one worksheet, to look for the employee's name and copy out the relevant details into this consolidate worksheet.
3. Next he must check that he have copied the information correctly into the consolidated worksheet.
4. Then he would fill up the IR8A/IR8C form with the relevant details.