HR managers running a Singapore payroll for the first time learn the same lesson, usually around month four: MOM compliance is not a quarterly tax filing. It is a continuous operational rhythm. Levies are due monthly. IR21 is event-triggered. EP and S Pass renewals come up six months before expiry. Sectoral quota changes do not wait for the financial year. Miss any one of these by a few weeks and the consequences range from cash penalties to MOM debarment.
This article is the operating calendar — the recurring obligations a Singapore HR or finance manager has to MOM, IRAS and ICA across the year — with citations to primary sources and the small operational details that competitor articles tend to gloss over. As at 26 April 2026, with the Workplace Fairness Act 2026 now in force and the S Pass and Local Qualifying Salary increases landing on 1 July 2026, this is the version every HR team should be working off.
Singapore Employment Agency is the consumer brand of Little Big Employment Agency Pte Ltd (LBEA), MOM Licence 19C9790. We process work pass applications, renewals and appeals; this guide is the “everything else” that sits around those filings.
Monthly obligations
Foreign Worker Levy (FWL)
Per MOM’s Foreign Worker Levy page, employers of S Pass and Work Permit holders must pay the FWL monthly. Levy bills are issued on the 6th of each month and must be paid by the 17th of the same month (or the next working day). GIRO is the standard mechanism; failure to pay on time leads to interest, a S$30 late-payment penalty per month per worker, and ultimately work pass cancellation. Levy rates differ by sector (Manufacturing, Construction, Marine Shipyard, Process, Services), tier (1, 2, 3) and worker type (Higher Skilled, Basic). Tier-3 levies are punitive by design — they are the lever MOM uses to discourage over-reliance on foreign labour in any single firm.
From 2028, MOM has confirmed at COS 2026 that the levy framework will be streamlined for Manufacturing and Services, with the bottom two tiers merged. Highest-tier rates are unchanged. Plan headcount accordingly.
CPF (Central Provident Fund)
For Singapore citizens and PRs only. Employer and employee contributions are due by the 14th of the month following the month in which wages were paid. Per CPF Board, employer contribution rates are age-banded: 17% for employees aged 55 and below, stepping down for older age bands. From 1 January 2026, the contribution rate for workers aged 55 to 65 increased again per the long-running staged-uplift schedule. Late CPF contributions attract a S$5 minimum or 1.5% per month interest, whichever is higher.
SDL (Skills Development Levy)
Payable on all employees (including foreign workers) at 0.25% of monthly wages, capped at S$11.25 per employee per month. Collected together with CPF. Funds the SkillsFuture training ecosystem. Often forgotten when companies onboard their first non-CPF (foreign) employee — SDL still applies. We covered this in our archive piece on the Skills Development Levy.
Event-triggered obligations
IR21 tax clearance for departing foreign employees
Per IRAS Form IR21 guidance, employers must file Form IR21 at least one month before a foreign employee ceases employment, leaves Singapore for more than three months, or transfers out of the Singapore entity. The employer must withhold all monies due to the employee from the date of awareness until tax clearance is granted. The most common operational failure is paying out the final salary before clearance — the employer becomes personally liable for the employee’s tax bill. This is one of the most expensive procedural mistakes a Singapore HR manager can make.
Work pass cancellation
Per MOM, employers must cancel an EP, S Pass or Work Permit within seven days of the last day of employment. The cancellation triggers the levy stop date, the worker’s short-term visit pass to leave Singapore, and the IR21 clock. Late cancellation continues to accrue levy and exposes the employer to MOM debarment risk. We covered the renewal/cancellation cycle in our archive on EP renewal.
Work injury notification (WICA)
Under the Work Injury Compensation Act, employers must report any work injury that results in more than three days of medical leave, hospitalisation, or fatality, to MOM within 10 days. Per the MOM WICA page, work injury insurance is mandatory for all manual workers and for non-manual workers earning S$2,600 per month or below. Many SME HR teams discover WICA only after an incident — check the policy is in place before headcount touches operations.
Annual obligations
Form IR8A (employee remuneration)
By 1 March each year, employers must furnish Form IR8A and supporting Appendices (8A, 8B) to all employees and (for AIS-registered employers) submit electronically to IRAS via the Auto-Inclusion Scheme. Per IRAS, this is the single most important annual filing for employee personal income tax. Errors flow into employees’ tax assessments and into the IR21 bundle. Auto-Inclusion is mandatory from 2024 onwards for all employers with five or more employees.
EP and S Pass renewals
EP renewals can be filed up to six months before expiry; S Pass renewals up to three months before. From 1 January 2026, renewals applied the EP qualifying floor of SGD 5,600 (most sectors) and SGD 6,200 (Financial Services). From 1 July 2026, the S Pass minimum qualifying salary rises from S$3,300 to S$3,600, and the LQS rises from S$1,600 to S$1,800 per month per COS 2026. From 1 January 2028, the EP renewal floor jumps to SGD 6,000 (most sectors) and SGD 6,600 (financial services). HR teams should run a salary audit on every existing pass holder against the renewal-year floor at least 12 months ahead. We covered the EP fundamentals in our 2026 EP guide.
COMPASS firm-level attributes
C3 Diversity (nationality concentration) and C4 Local PMET workforce attributes are firm-level scores that move slowly. They are calculated continuously and surface in EP applications and renewals. The annual practice is to pull the firm-level COMPASS scorecard from MOM’s portal at the start of each year, identify deficiencies, and remediate before the next hiring wave. Many firms only discover their C3/C4 deficit when an EP application fails — by which point the remediation is at least a six-month exercise.
The new arrivals: Workplace Fairness Act and SPL expansion
The Workplace Fairness Act 2026 took effect this year. It outlaws workplace discrimination based on protected characteristics including age, nationality, sex, marital status, pregnancy, race, religion, language, disability and mental health condition. Per Singapore Statutes Online, employers above a headcount threshold must have a written grievance-handling process, and TADM/MOM can investigate complaints. Most HR teams need to update job adverts, offer letters, performance-management policies and the grievance process. We covered the operational impact in our piece on the Workplace Fairness Act 2026 and a related piece on grievance-handling policy compliance.
The Shared Parental Leave (SPL) expansion to 10 weeks took effect 1 April 2026 for parents of citizen children born from that date. Update the leave policy and HRIS; the SPL claim flows through the LifeSG platform.
The 12-month operating cadence at a glance
Every month: FWL by 17th, CPF by 14th, payroll, levy reconciliation against headcount.
Every quarter: Pull the firm-level COMPASS scorecard, audit headcount against sectoral quotas, review pass expiry calendar.
By 1 March: Form IR8A to employees and IRAS Auto-Inclusion submission.
Six months before any EP expiry: Salary audit against the applicable renewal floor; renewal application.
On any departure: IR21 filing one month ahead of last day, work pass cancellation within seven days of last day, full and final settlement only after tax clearance.
On any work injury: WICA notification within 10 days.
Annually in Q1: Review insurance, refresh the Workplace Fairness Act policy stack, update the leave handbook against current SPL/maternity/paternity rules.
Where to go from here
For work pass applications, renewals, appeals and the surrounding MOM compliance work, Singapore Employment Agency / LBEA handles the file end to end. For broader corporate-secretarial and accounting compliance — ACRA filings, GST, IRAS corporate tax, payroll and CPF processing — Raffles Corporate Services and Singapore Secretary Services handle the rest of the obligation stack. The work pass calendar sits inside the larger compliance calendar; we covered the core 2026 EP picture in our EP guide and the long-game PR conversation in our PR pathway guide.
Authoritative sources: MOM · IRAS · CPF Board · Singapore Statutes Online.
— The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services