Check the information IRAS has pre-filled and add anything it does not have.
Most of the figures on an employee's tax return come from third parties: your employer, the CPF Board, charities and government ministries. They send the figures to IRAS before filing opens. That makes filing quick, but it also makes it easy to assume your return is complete when something is missing. You need to know which figures arrive on their own, which never arrive, and what to do about the gap.
Under the Auto-Inclusion Scheme, participating employers send each employee's yearly income directly to IRAS. This covers salary, bonuses and allowances, and, where the employer reports them, benefits in kind and share gains. That income is pre-filled in your return, which means IRAS has entered it for you from information a third party supplied. Lesson 1.3, "What counts as income from your job", sets out what this employment income should contain.
Reliefs arrive the same way. If your employer takes part in the Auto-Inclusion Scheme, IRAS grants your CPF relief on compulsory contributions automatically, based on the information your employer sends, so you do not need to claim it (lesson 2.1, "Reliefs you get without asking"). Charities report donations you made with your NRIC (lesson 2.4). The ministries report NSman Relief. Information on SRS contributions and CPF cash top-ups is generally passed to IRAS as well, and appears as pre-filled relief.
Pre-filled does not mean correct. An employer can be missing, a bonus can be wrong, or a relief can be copied forward from a year when it applied but no longer does. Check each pre-filled figure against your own payslips, statements, policies and contracts. "Reading the fine print: payslips, statements, policies and contracts" and lesson 4.2, "Check your income and reliefs before you pay", show you how to do this.
IRAS places some taxpayers on the No-Filing Service when, as far as it can tell, all their income and reliefs are already known from employers and other sources. If you are on it, IRAS issues your notice of assessment from the information it has, without you filing anything.
Being selected means IRAS believes it already has your income. It does not mean you have nothing else to declare, because IRAS only knows what it receives. If you had income IRAS has not seen, or you qualify for reliefs it has not given you, you must tell IRAS by filing or updating your details through the IRAS portal within the filing period. You can still log in and file while you are on the service. If you stay silent when you know something is missing, the assessment stays wrong and the responsibility for that sits with you.
Darren works for a school and also earns money from Saturday tuition. For three years, each spring, IRAS told him he had been selected for the No-Filing Service and did not need to file. He took it as good news and did nothing. After lesson 5.3, "Side income and other income you must declare", he wondered how IRAS could know his return was complete when it had never heard of his tuition. His school reported his salary and his reliefs were automatic, so IRAS put him on the service. The tuition income never reached IRAS, so his assessments missed it for all three years. He logged in, opened his return and found he could file even though he had been told he need not. He added his tuition income and expenses for the year being assessed. He also noted that the two earlier years needed fixing, which is covered in lesson 7.2, "Mistakes, amendments and objections".
Some income is never pre-filled because no one reports it to IRAS, so you must add it yourself:
rental income, whether from a room or a whole property (lesson 5.2) income from a side business, freelance work, tutoring or platforms (lesson 5.3) foreign income that Singapore does tax, such as income received through a partnership (Module 6) employment income from an employer outside the Auto-Inclusion Scheme, which appears on the IR8A that employer gives you
Some reliefs depend on facts IRAS cannot see. If one of these is not pre-filled and you qualify, add it yourself. Examples are a first claim for Parent Relief, a new claim for a child, and Grandparent Caregiver Relief.
IRAS sets a filing deadline each year and publishes it when filing opens. The deadline is different for online and paper filing, and the dates can change. When the notice that filing has opened arrives, check the current deadline on the IRAS website and put it in your calendar that day.
If you are not on the No-Filing Service, filing late can bring penalties, and IRAS can issue an estimated assessment, which may be higher than your actual tax. If you are on the No-Filing Service and have something to add, the same filing period applies. Log in, open your return, check the pre-filled figures, add what is missing, and file or update before the deadline. If you find that earlier years were wrong, note them and fix them through the amendments process in lesson 7.2.
For the activity, log in to your IRAS account and write down which items were pre-filled last year and which you added, or should have.
Log in to your IRAS account. List the items that were pre-filled last year and the items you added yourself.
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