Company Incorporation Singapore: Costs, Steps & GST (2026)

Incorporation comes down to three things: a resident director, S$315 in fees, and a filing calendar that starts immediately

Registering a private limited company with ACRA costs S$315: S$15 for the name application and S$300 to incorporate. Most applications are approved within minutes of payment.

Before you can file, the company needs at least one director who is ordinarily resident in Singapore, one shareholder, a local registered address, and S$1 of share capital. The resident director is the requirement that stops most overseas founders.

After you file, the obligations start straight away. A company secretary within six months, an annual return to ACRA within seven months of your financial year-end, and a corporate tax return by 30 November.

Foreign founders can’t file at all. ACRA requires a registered Corporate Service Provider to reserve the name and register the entity on their behalf.

Quick Answers: Cost, Requirements, Timing and GST

Question	Short Answer
What does it cost?	S$315 in ACRA fees. Add a company secretary and a registered address and year one runs closer to S$1,000, or several thousand if you need a nominee director.
How long does it take?	Most registrations are approved soon after payment. Complex ones take up to 15 working days; a referral to another agency takes 14 to 60 days.
Can a foreigner own it?	Yes, 100%. But at least one director must be ordinarily resident in Singapore, and a foreigner can’t file the application themselves.
What’s the minimum capital?	One issued share and S$1. There’s no real threshold to clear.
When do I need GST?	Once taxable turnover passes S$1 million. Anything less than that is optional, and registering early commits you to e-invoicing and a two-year minimum.
What tax will I pay?	17% flat, but the start-up exemption cuts the effective rate on your first S$100,000 of profit to 4.25% for three years.

Most incorporation quotes you’ll see aren’t quoting the S$315. They’re quoting the company secretary, the registered address, and the resident director you may not have. That’s where the range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand comes from.

Table of Contents

1. What you need before you can register
2. Choosing your structure
3. Can a foreigner register a Singapore company?
4. How to register with ACRA: five steps
5. What it actually costs
6. Your certificate of incorporation and business profile
7. GST registration for a new company
8. Corporate tax and the start-up exemption
9. Your first-year compliance calendar
10. Where to keep your business money
11. FAQs

What You Need Before You Can Register

Six things, and you need all of them lined up before the filing goes through.

1. Directors: at least one, and at least one must be ordinarily resident in Singapore. That means a citizen, a permanent resident, or the holder of a valid Employment Pass, EntrePass, or Overseas Networks & Expertise Pass. Directors must be at least 18, mentally fit, and not disqualified from directorship.

2. Shareholders: minimum one, maximum 50 for a private company. Individuals or corporate entities, local or foreign. No residency requirement at all.

3. Share capital: one issued share and at least S$1. Banks and account providers do sometimes read a S$1 capitalisation as a sign the company isn’t trading seriously, which is why many founders start at S$1,000 or more.

4. A registered address: a physical address in Singapore, not a PO box, open to the public for at least three hours on each business day so official mail and legal documents can be delivered. It appears on ACRA’s public records. You can use your home under the Home Office Scheme, but you have to register with HDB or URA first, and your residential address becomes public.

5. A company name: unique, and the distinctive part has to be new. Adding “Holdings” or “Group” to an existing name won’t clear the check. Names containing words like bank, finance, school, media, or education get referred to the relevant government agency, and those reviews run 14 to 60 days. Once approved, the name is held for 120 days.

6. An SSIC code: one primary Singapore Standard Industrial Classification code, plus an optional secondary one, so two at most. Pick it carefully. It decides whether your activity needs a licence, which government grants you can apply for, and how banks assess you at onboarding. Cryptocurrency, gambling, and money services attract far more scrutiny when the company later opens an account.

Two more appointments fall due after registration rather than before it:

• Company secretary, within six months. Must be a natural person resident in Singapore, and cannot be the sole director. Leave the role vacant past six months and the director faces a fine of up to S$1,000.
  
  
• Auditor, within three months, unless the company is audit-exempt. Most new ones are. A private company qualifies for audit exemption if it meets two of three criteria: annual revenue of S$10 million or less, total assets of S$10 million or less, or 50 employees or fewer. A newly incorporated company is assessed on its current financial year, so a first-year company almost always clears it.

Choosing Your Structure

ACRA offers five structures. Most founders land on one of three.

• Private limited company (Pte Ltd): a separate legal entity, so shareholders’ liability is capped at what they put in. Taxed at corporate rates, and the only structure that gets the start-up tax exemption. S$315 to register.

• Sole proprietorship: one owner, S$115 to register, and unlimited liability. Your personal assets sit behind the business debts. Profits are taxed as your personal income.

• Limited liability partnership (LLP): two or more partners, separate legal entity, and partners aren’t personally liable for what other partners do. Taxed at each partner’s personal or corporate rate.

The liability difference is the one that matters. The S$200 gap in registration fees is what stops a creditor coming after your personal savings if the business fails.

You’ll also meet the term exempt private company on ACRA paperwork. It’s a Pte Ltd with no more than 20 shareholders and no corporation holding a beneficial interest in its shares. It used to be the route to lighter filing obligations. Since the small-company audit exemption came in, a private company with corporate shareholders can qualify for the same relief, so the label carries less weight than it once did.

Can a Foreigner Register a Singapore Company?

Yes. A foreigner can be a director and own 100% of the shares. What a foreigner can’t do is be the company’s only director, or file the application personally.

The Resident Director Requirement

This is the hardest requirement for an overseas founder, and there’s no exemption from it. Every Singapore company needs one director who is a citizen, a permanent resident, or holds a valid Employment Pass, EntrePass, or Overseas Networks & Expertise Pass.

If you’re relocating to Singapore anyway, you can be that director yourself once your pass is issued. Entrepreneurs can apply for an EntrePass either before incorporating or within six months of setting up. If you’re staying overseas, you’ll need someone else in the seat.

You also can’t self-file. ACRA is explicit: foreigners must engage a Corporate Service Provider to reserve a name and register a business structure. That one rule is why searching for Singapore incorporation turns up service firms rather than a government how-to. The provider is doing your anti-money-laundering due diligence, arranging your nominee director if you need one, and carrying real regulatory liability for it. The cheapest quote isn’t automatically the right one.

Nominee Directors and the 2025 Rule Change

A nominee director is a Singapore resident appointed purely to satisfy the residency rule, with no executive say in how the company runs. It’s legitimate and common. The rules changed in 2025.

• The Corporate Service Providers Act 2024 came into force on 9 June 2025. A nominee directorship can now only be arranged by a registered Corporate Service Provider. Asking a friend or contact in Singapore to sit as your nominee is no longer legal, and doing it outside a registered arrangement carries a fine of up to S$10,000.
  
  
• A companion law tightened disclosure from 16 June 2025. Nominee directors and nominee shareholders have to declare their nominee status to ACRA and name who they’re acting for. The maximum fine for offences on those registers rose from S$5,000 to S$25,000.

Where Your Company Gets Taxed If You Run It From Abroad

Incorporating in Singapore doesn’t automatically make your company a Singapore tax resident. Residency turns on where control and management is exercised, meaning where the top-level policy and strategic decisions are actually made, not where the admin happens.

A company whose board runs it entirely from overseas can end up treated as non-resident. Two things follow: non-resident companies generally can’t claim the Start-Up Tax Exemption, and they may lose access to Singapore’s tax treaty benefits. It’s a facts-based test, so a foreign-owned company that really runs from Singapore can still be resident.

Singapore also taxes on a territorial basis. Income earned here is taxed as it arises, and foreign-sourced income becomes taxable when it’s received in Singapore. If your company earns meaningfully overseas, go through this with your accountant before you decide where the board will actually sit. Our guide to what remittance costs a business covers the mechanics of moving that money.

How to Register With ACRA: Five Steps

Registration happens entirely through Bizfile, ACRA’s online filing portal. There are two separate transactions: the name application, then the incorporation.

What you get back: a notice of incorporation, your company’s Unique Entity Number (UEN), and a link to download a free copy of your business profile, all in your Bizfile inbox. The UEN is what you’ll use for everything from tax filing to opening a business account.

What It Actually Costs

The government fees are fixed at S$315. Everything after that is set by whichever provider you use, which is why quotes vary so widely for what looks like the same company.

Item	Cost	Mandatory?
ACRA name application	S$15	Yes
ACRA registration fee	S$300	Yes
Company secretary	Around S$200 to S$1,200 a year	Yes, within 6 months
Registered office address	Around S$60 to S$2,400 a year	Only if you’re not using your own premises
Corporate service provider package	Around S$500 to S$3,000	Optional for residents, required for foreigners
Nominee director	Around S$1,200 to S$5,000 a year	Only if you have no resident director
Business account	S$0 with YouBiz	Yes, in practice
Certified certificate of incorporation	Small fee via Bizfile	No, the free e-notification is usually enough

Only the ACRA name-application and registration fees are official published figures. Service-provider pricing is a competitive market with no set rate, so treat the ranges above as indicative and get written quotes.

⚖️ A Singapore resident incorporating a simple company can do it for S$315 plus a secretary. A foreign founder needing a filing agent, a registered address, and a nominee director is realistically looking at a few thousand dollars in year one. That gap, not the ACRA fee, is what “cheapest incorporation in Singapore” searches are really about.

Your Certificate of Incorporation and Business Profile

Singapore companies do get a certificate of incorporation, though not in the framed-parchment sense.

What arrives free: on successful registration, ACRA emails an electronic notice of incorporation to the company’s officers and to whoever filed. It carries no signature, and for most purposes it’s the document that proves the company exists. You also get a free copy of your business profile.

What you pay for: if a bank overseas or a counterparty insists on a formal certified copy, you can buy one through Bizfile for a fee and download it electronically. Additional business profiles cost a small fee each.

Checking someone else’s company: ACRA’s business profile is the official record, showing the registered name, UEN, incorporation date, registered address, principal activities, officers, and shareholders. It’s worth pulling one on a new supplier or client before you extend them credit. A few dollars is cheap insurance against an invoice that never gets paid, and it’s the document most business account providers will ask you for anyway.

GST Registration for a New Company

Most newly incorporated companies don’t need to register for GST. It becomes compulsory once taxable turnover passes S$1 million. The rate is 9%.

A GST-registered company charges 9% on its taxable supplies in Singapore, files returns with IRAS on a set cycle, and pays over what it collects. It can also claim back the GST it paid on business purchases, which is what makes registration attractive to some businesses well before they’re required to.

When Registration Becomes Compulsory

Two tests, and IRAS calls them the retrospective and prospective views.

• Retrospective. Your taxable turnover for the calendar year just ended came in above S$1 million. Apply by 30 January of the following year; registration takes effect on 1 March.
  
  
• Prospective. You have reasonable grounds to expect turnover will exceed S$1 million over the next 12 months. Apply within 30 days of forming that expectation. Since 1 July 2025, registration then takes effect 2 months from the forecast date, which buys you a window to get pricing and invoicing ready.

The prospective test is the one that catches founders out, because it bites on the day you sign, not the day the money lands. IRAS wants concrete proof behind the forecast, such as a signed contract or confirmed orders. A business plan or a revenue target isn’t enough.

If you register late: IRAS backdates your registration to the date you should have registered, so you account for and pay GST on past sales even though you never charged your customers for it. On top of that sits a fine of up to S$10,000 and a penalty of 10% of the GST due. Voluntarily disclosing a late registration generally gets the fine and penalty waived, but the backdated GST still has to be paid.

Registering Voluntarily

You can register below the threshold. It makes sense if you sell mostly to other GST-registered businesses, or if you’re paying a lot of GST on imports and equipment that you could be claiming back. It makes less sense if you sell to consumers, because you’re adding 9% to your price without your customers being able to claim it back.

Three conditions come with it that a lot of founders don’t see coming:

• A director, sole proprietor, partner, or whoever prepares the returns must complete IRAS’s Overview of GST e-Learning course and pass the quiz, unless they already manage another GST-registered business or an accredited tax adviser prepares the returns.
  
  
• The company must set up GIRO for GST payments and refunds.
  
  
• The company must stay registered for a minimum of two years.

The InvoiceNow Requirement

New voluntary registrants now have to transmit invoice data to IRAS through InvoiceNow, Singapore’s Peppol-based e-invoicing network. The obligation starts the moment you register, not at some later date.

Companies incorporated within six months of their application were pulled in from 1 November 2025. From 1 April 2026, it applies to all new voluntary registrants, regardless of when they were incorporated. IRAS has confirmed the requirement extends to all GST-registered businesses by April 2031.

💡 That changes the voluntary-registration decision. Opting in early no longer just starts your GST obligations; it commits the company to an e-invoicing setup at the same time. If you’re near the threshold anyway, factor it into the timing.

GST Schemes Worth Knowing

Once registered, IRAS runs several schemes that change when GST actually leaves your bank account. The timing decides how long your money stays in the business.

• Cash Accounting Scheme. For smaller businesses. Account for GST when it’s paid or received rather than when the invoice is raised. Useful if customers pay slowly.
  
  
• Major Exporter Scheme. Suspends GST on imports for companies that re-export a substantial share of what they bring in. Zero-rated supplies need to be over 50% of total supplies, or worth more than S$10 million.
  
  
• Import GST Deferment Scheme. Defers import GST to your GST return instead of paying it at the point of import, so it’s claimed back in the same return it’s accounted for.
  
  
• Zero GST Warehouse Scheme. Run by Singapore Customs. Import GST on non-dutiable goods is suspended while they sit in a licensed warehouse, and only becomes payable if the goods are released into the local market. Goods re-exported straight out are zero-rated.

Each has its own application and compliance conditions, so check eligibility with IRAS before counting on one.

Corporate Tax and the Start-Up Exemption

Singapore taxes company profits at a flat 17%, and almost no new company pays anything close to that.

Start-up tax exemption, for the first three consecutive Years of Assessment: 75% exemption on the first S$100,000 of normal chargeable income, and a further 50% on the next S$100,000. Maximum exemption S$125,000 a year. That works out to an effective 4.25% on your first S$100,000 of profit.

Partial tax exemption, which every company not claiming the start-up exemption gets: 75% on the first S$10,000 and 50% on the next S$190,000, for a maximum exemption of S$102,500.

There’s no second layer of tax on the way out. Singapore runs a one-tier system, so profits are taxed once at company level and dividends paid to shareholders are exempt in their hands. That holds for foreign shareholders too, with no dividend withholding tax on distributions from taxed profits.

What you file: Estimated Chargeable Income within three months of your financial year-end, and the corporate tax return by 30 November. Smaller companies file the simplified Form C-S, or Form C-S (Lite) if annual revenue is S$200,000 or below, and neither requires full financial statements. Our guide to corporate tax in Singapore runs two worked examples from profit to final bill.

Your First-Year Compliance Calendar

Incorporation is day one of an annual cycle. Here’s what lands in the first 12 months.

When	What’s due
Within 3 months of incorporation	Appoint an auditor, unless the company is audit-exempt
Within 6 months of incorporation	Appoint a company secretary
Within 3 months of financial year-end	File Estimated Chargeable Income with IRAS
Within 6 months of financial year-end	Hold the AGM (private companies can skip it if financial statements go to members within 5 months)
Within 7 months of financial year-end	File the annual return with ACRA
By 30 November each year	File the corporate tax return
Within 30 days of any change	Update ACRA on directors, shareholders, address, or controllers

The annual return and the tax return are different filings to different agencies, and confusing the two is the most common first-year mistake. The annual return keeps ACRA’s registry accurate. The tax return settles what the company owes IRAS. Both carry their own late-filing penalties.

Keeping your registers of controllers, nominee directors, and nominee shareholders current is now backed by fines of up to S$25,000. Clean records make all of it easier, which is what our comparison of expense management software for Singapore SMEs is about.

Where to Keep Your Business Money

A new company can’t pay a supplier or take a payment until it has an account, and that’s usually the first thing that slows founders down after registration. Traditional banks want documents, sometimes an in-person visit, and can take weeks, which is awkward for a director who isn’t in Singapore.

YouBiz opens faster than that. It’s a S$0/month multi-currency business account from YouTrip and Mastercard, used by 10,000+ finance teams.

What you get:

• S$0 a month. No monthly fee, no minimum balance
• Unlimited 1% cashback on eligible spends, with no cap and no minimum
• Real 0% FX fees on foreign card spend, at the Mastercard wholesale rate
• Free corporate cards for the team, virtual ones live immediately and physical ones in 5 to 7 business days
• 8 currency wallets to hold and exchange: SGD, USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, HKD, AUD and CHF
• Xero integration, plus 50% off the first 6 months of a Xero subscription for a limited time only

How the application works: apply at biz.you.co/register, and Singpass MyInfo Business auto-fills your ACRA details, so the profile you just downloaded from Bizfile does most of the form. There’s no fee to open. You’ll need a board resolution, plus ID and proof of address for the authorised users. An overseas-incorporated company uploads a company registry document in place of the ACRA profile. Industry restrictions on application apply, like Singapore banks.

What to know: it’s a prepaid account rather than a credit line, so the company spends what it has topped up, which keeps cashflow visible from day one. A business that also wants a working-capital float would run YouBiz alongside an existing credit facility. Your money is kept in segregated safeguarding accounts with partner banks like DBS Bank, under the Payment Services Act framework. YouBiz is a major payment institution licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and a Principal Member of Mastercard.

If you’re weighing it against what your bank offers, our DBS corporate card comparison puts them side by side.

FAQs

Register in Minutes. Plan for the Year After

Singapore makes registration easy on purpose. S$315, an online form, and a UEN in your inbox. The part worth planning for is everything the fee doesn’t cover: the resident director you need before you can file, the secretary due within six months, and a filing calendar that starts the moment the company exists.

👉 Bottom line: get the resident director sorted first, because nothing else can happen without one. Then watch your turnover rather than rushing GST. Below S$1 million it’s optional, and registering early commits you to e-invoicing and a two-year minimum.

YouBiz handles the money side of a brand-new entity: S$0/month, real 0% FX fees on foreign card spend, unlimited 1% cashback on eligible spends, and free corporate cards with statements that flow into Xero. Applying takes under five minutes via Singpass, which auto-fills the ACRA details you just registered, with approval in one to two business days and a virtual YouBiz Mastercard live in the app straight after.

For the admin that follows, see our guides to writing a company expense policy and the GST treatment of disbursements versus reimbursements.

This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice. Fees, thresholds, and deadlines can change, so confirm your company’s position with ACRA, IRAS, or a qualified adviser before you file.