24 August 2011

Taxpayers are required to file the Form IR37, IR37A, IR37B, IR37C or IR37D, whichever is applicable, with respect to payments made to non-residents that are subject to withholding tax under Sections 45 and/or 45A to 45H of the Income Tax Act.  Taxpayers to take note that IRAS has introduced a new withholding tax e-service to file the various Forms IR37 (S45 e-Service). The suite of S45 e-Service is as follows:

• The “S45 Online e-Filing” system allows the preparation and submission of a single form to IRAS via myTax Portal.
• The “S45 Offline Data-Entry (ODE) application” allows the preparation of single or multiple records of payees offline, and to be submitted as a single file to IRAS via the e-Services portal.

Taxpayers can submit forms and make payment on-line using the above applications. Payers can also use the e-service to view the offline status of the submission records, as well as the GIRO deduction details. The service also enables taxpayers to check the filing status of Certificate of Residence after they have claimed successfully for double taxation relief. The status of the above can be viewed 3 days after they have been e-filed.

To use the S45 e-Services, a GIRO account is needed. IRAS provides a Master GIRO application form and has instructed taxpayers to select the “S45 tax type”. Once processed, it allows the addition of other tax type accounts to be paid by GIRO without having to complete another GIRO application form. Taxpayers need to use their own bank account, however if there is already an existing GIRO arrangement in place with IRAS , there is no need to add these tax types to the Master GIRO form.

Organisations wishing to authorise their employees or a third party to access e-Services on their behalf can do so via an e-Services Authorisation System (EASY) online system.

Recommended hardware/software requirements are Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista, Pentium 4 PC and above with 1 GB RAM (recommended 2 GB RAM), 512Kbps speed Broadband with connection to a local ISP, Internet Explorer 5.5 and above or Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and above as well as Java Runtime Environment Version 6 Update 14 and above (for usage of ODE).

For more details on the IRAS e-service, please click here.

Source: This article was extracted from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) website.