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The Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) of Singapore has announced legislative changes regarding alignment of Annual General Meetings (AGM) and Annual Returns (AR) timelines with the Financial Year End (FYE) that will take effect on 31 August 2018.
What are the changes?
Example : Company with financial year ended (FYE) 31/08/2018 and last year annual general meeting (AGM) held on 31/12/2017. Company is not exempted to hold AGM.
Under Current Rule with 3 rules to comply :
Earliest deadline of AGM is 31/12/2018 and deadline to file Annual return with ACRA is XXXXX (30 days from deadline of AGM)
Under New Rule with 1 rule to comply :
Earliest deadline of AGM is 28/02/2019 and deadline to file Annual return with ACRA is 31/03/2019 (7 months from FYE)
To prevent companies from arbitrarily changing their FYE, Companies must notify the Registrar of the FYE upon incorporation and of any subsequent change. Approval from ACRA is required if:
(i) the change in FYE will result in a financial year longer than 18 months or;
(ii) the FYE has been changed within the last 5 years;
Unless otherwise approved by ACRA, the duration of a company’s financial year must not be more than 18 months in the years of incorporation.
Only FYE of the current and immediate financial year may be changed (provided that the statutory deadlines for the holding of AGM, filing of annual returns and sending of financial statements have not passed);
Companies with an unusual financial year period (e.g. 52 weeks) should notify ACRA via the notification of change of FYE if they want to avoid applying for approval to change FYE every year.
