Structure is everything. You must first select your business structure before you can even register a single thing with ACRA, which happens to be the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, the company registrar in Singapore. Majority of the serious founders jump to the Private Limited Company, or Pte. Ltd. It has its legal personality. It is allowed to sign contracts, borrow funds and be sued without bringing your own savings into the quagmire. Minimum paid up capital is only SGD 1. Solids are easy to establish on paper but far more personal risky – You and the business are one. In case the business owes money, you owe money too. That is a bet that most founders avoid. For transparency on pricing, full details are provided online.
The following is what ACRA requires of you in real: approved company name, at least one director that is a resident of Singapore, registered Singapore office address, open to the public at least three hours a day and certainly not P.O. box, one or more shareholders, and a secretary of the company, nominated within six months of incorporation. Fail that six month window and there are fast penalties. A Singapore Pte. Ltd. allows foreigners to own 100% of the company which is a huge surprise to most people. That local director requirement is the sticking point. Your director has to be a Singapore citizen, permanent resident or holder of a valid pass. Workarounds, no exceptions.
That is precisely where Hub Corporate Services can be found. Hub is based at Chinatown Point, and it has more than 20 years of experience assisting founders to be incorporated in a clean and rapid manner. They include all the details: name registration, ACRA filing, company constitution, registered address, bank account introductions, and SSIC code advice (the five-digit classification code which explains to ACRA what your business actually is). Use the wrong SSIC code and the banks can decide to tag your account application as high-risk. Hub also provide nominee director services to foreign founders who require a locally resident director to satisfy that legal requirement. This was clearly stated by one of the clients: it became easy to work with Hub, and the issues related to ACRA and IRAS were quickly solved. That is the type of review that cannot be made with money.
This is after incorporation, and many founders do drop the ball. Annual returns are required to be submitted to ACRA within a span of seven months of your Financial Year End. Within six months of the same date you must hold your AGM. Corporate tax returns are submitted to IRAS every year. The date you select as the Financial Year End during incorporation is not just an accounting gimmick because (a) this date affects your tax filing period and (b) this date impacts your eligibility to receive the Tax Exemption Scheme of New Start-Up Companies which allows 75 percent tax exemption on the first SGD 100,000 of chargeable income during your first three consecutive years of assessment. That’s real money. You lose when you make a hasty decision.
The packages of Hub are adjusted to your needs, with the minimum package, including government incorporation package, SGD 315, and more comprehensive packages, including bookkeeping set-up, CorpPass and CPF advising, payroll and first-year financial statement preparation. Compliance is not a burden, but rather the grease that greases your engine. Neglect it and the entire machine grabs. Have it sorted on the first day, with people who have had it thousands of times before, and you have time to put in some energy to build something worth registering.