When is my GST return due, and must I file one when there is nothing to report?

Your due dates, by the month your financial year ends in

IRAS assigns your accounting periods when it approves the registration. They are quarterly unless you ask for monthly, and the quarters are cut from the month your financial year ends in, so the financial year always closes a GST quarter. There are three patterns, and a company on quarterly filing is on one of them unless it asked IRAS for different periods, at registration or later, and IRAS approved them; then the approval letter wins over this table. Otherwise, find the month your year ends in, and the next four due dates from today are beside it.

The return and the payment are due on the last day of the month after the quarter. The GIRO column is the 15th of the month after that, the day the deduction is taken from a GIRO account, or the next working day when the 15th is not one: where the 15th is a Saturday or Sunday the table shows the Monday and says so. It does not know the public holidays, which move the deduction by the same rule. The GIRO day is not a later due date, and a return that is filed late is late whichever way it is paid. See what goes in each box of the return.

A worked calendar: a 30 June year end

Nothing to report: the nil return is still due

A GST-registered business files a return for every accounting period, whether or not anything happened in it. A quarter with no sales, no purchases and no GST to pay is filed with zero in every box, by the same date, and it counts as a return; a quarter with nothing filed counts as a return outstanding, and the late-filing penalty starts the day after the due date.

A nil quarter is common in a company's first months of registration, in a dormant year, and in a company that invoices once or twice a year. In all three the answer is the same: file the zeros on time.

If the company has stopped making taxable supplies for good, the way out is to cancel the registration rather than file nil returns indefinitely. The application is made within 30 days of ceasing to be liable to be registered, a window Simpler Tax's compliance reference cites from secondary sources rather than from the IRAS page itself, so confirm it there. IRAS then issues a final return, the GST F8, due within 1 month from the end of the prescribed accounting period stated on the return IRAS issues you, not from the last day of registration. Every other outstanding return and payment goes in with it.

Paying: the same day, or on GIRO two weeks later

The tax in box 8 is due on the filing due date. A company that pays by GIRO has it deducted on the 15th of the month after the due date instead, or the next working day when the 15th is not one: a quarter ending 30 Sep 2026 is due 31 Oct 2026, and 15 Nov 2026 is a Sunday, so the GIRO deduction comes on Monday 16 Nov 2026. A public holiday on the day moves it again by the same rule; this page does not track those. That is the only respect in which GIRO moves the date; the return itself is still due on 31 Oct 2026.

A refund in box 8 is paid within 3 months of a quarterly return and within 1 month of a monthly one. An amount under S$5, payable or refundable, is neither collected nor paid, and it is not carried forward to the next return.

Late filing and late payment

Filing late costs S$200 at once and S$200 more for each completed month the return stays outstanding, capped at S$10,000 for any one return. IRAS may also raise an estimated assessment for the period and add 5% to it, and it can pursue a non-filer by court summons. The penalty is the same for a nil return that was never filed.

Paying late costs 5% of the tax outstanding. If the tax is still unpaid 60 days after that, a further 2% is added for each month it stays unpaid, until the additional penalties reach 50% of the tax.

Extensions are rare. A first-time filer may be given up to 1 month, and a filer with a specific difficulty (an IT breakdown, new software, key staff on long medical leave, a restructuring) up to 2 weeks; both must be applied for before the due date and approved.

Monthly filers and special accounting periods

A business may apply to file monthly, which IRAS approves case by case; it suits a business that is refunded every period, such as an exporter, because a monthly return is refunded within 1 month rather than 3. The due rule does not change: each month's return is due one month after the month ends, so January's return is due on the last day of February.

A business may also apply for special accounting periods that follow its own internal accounting calendar, such as a 4-4-5 week calendar. Those dates are the ones the business gave IRAS in its application; they can end mid-month, they live in IRAS's approval letter and nowhere else, and each return is still due one month after its period ends.

Sources

Statutory figures on this page are read from the Simpler Tax rulebook at build time, edition YA-2027, every source last checked 24 Jul 2026. The rulebook entries named below are the ones this page was computed from; the IRAS pages are what they were verified against.

• IRAS, Overview of the GST e-filing process
  https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/goods-services-tax-(gst)/filing-gst/overview-of-gst-e-filing-process
• IRAS e-Tax Guide, How do I prepare my GST return? (accounting periods, filing and payment, penalties)
  https://www.iras.gov.sg/media/docs/default-source/e-tax/etaxguide_gst_how-do-i-prepare-my-gst-return.pdf
• IRAS, Cancelling GST registration (the final return)
  https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/goods-services-tax-(gst)/gst-registration-deregistration/cancelling-gst-registration
• Due date, payment, GIRO, default frequency and nil returns rulebook gst.f5.filing
• The three quarter staggers, keyed on the financial year end month: engine core.gstQuarterEndMonths, the rule the app cuts its own quarters with. The GIRO weekend roll (Saturday or Sunday to the Monday) is this page's own arithmetic on the calendar; public holidays are not modelled
• Penalties, extensions and refund timing: Simpler Tax research note research/gst-f5.md, sections Filing, payment and refunds and Penalties, read at build time and reconciled with the compliance atlas

Related answers

• GST F5 box by box, with a worked quarterWhat goes in each box, once you know the date.
• Do I have to register for GST, and from when?The retrospective and the prospective tests.
• A dormant company: do I still file, and what?The returns a company that did nothing still owes.
• When is my ECI due, and do I have to file it at all?The other date on the calendar.
• Year of assessment versus financial year endWhich year you are filing.