Who should IR56F be submitted for?
When an employee resigns from your company, you will need to prepare IR56F forms to print for mailing to Inland Revenue Department (IRD).
This form will need to be submitted one month prior to the cessation of employment or resignation date.
Example:
On 5 June 2022, Bruce Wang terminated his employment with Company X and has no plans to leave Hong Kong after his termination.
In this case, Company X just has to file one copy of IR56F before 5 May 2022. Thereafter, Company X should provide a copy of IR56F to Bruce.
Know that after filing IR56F, you should not file any IR56B for that year of assessment. Filing two IR56 tax forms may result in charging tax twice.
If the employee is about to depart from HK, Form IR56G should be completed instead.
For further reading on IR56F, you can check out our blog post What is IR56E, IR56F, and IR56G?: An Employer’s Guide here.
Eligibility for IR56F Generation in Talenox
To be eligible for IR56F generation, you will need to ensure that the employee’s Resign Date and Reason for cessation are keyed into their Employee’s Profile:
Once you have keyed this in, this will be automatically reflected in IR56F.
You can follow this guide on how what to do when an employee resigns from the company:
How to Apply for Approval
As Talenox is considered a self-developed software by Inland Revenue Department (IRD), employers who wish to use our datafile must obtain written approval before you can file the respective IR56 forms in computerised format to the Department.
To apply for approval, you can furnish the application by downloading the sample data files from Talenox.
Head over to Payroll > Payroll Settings > IR56F > Edit Employer Info for 2023
You'll need to fill in most of your Employer Information for the year correctly so that this information will be captured in the sample files submitted to IRD for approval (required).
After keying in and saving the Employer Information in Step 1, select the "Apply for Approval" option to start downloading the sample data files for approval submission to IRD.
Download the files listed, fill out the forms and submit them. The items can be sent to IRD from IRD’s online e-service: https://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/ese/efile/esers/index.php
Upon obtaining the approval, you can go through the steps to “Download E-Filing form” from the IR56F page and submit the file directly to IRD via Online Mode or Mixed Mode.
For further information, you can refer to IRD’s site here: https://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/ese/erc.htm#a03
How to generate and make the submission of IR56F forms
To submit IR56F to Inland Revenue Department (IRD), you can refer to the guide below or follow these steps:
Head over to Payroll > Payroll Settings > IR56F.
Update your Employer Info and double check all the IR56F forms to ensure that everything is in place.
As Talenox is a self-developed software, employers who wish to submit IR56F data file to IRD, must first seek approval from the Department. The steps can be viewed by clicking on “Apply for Approval” button.
Upon obtaining the approval, click on “Download E-Filing form” and submit the file directly to IRD via Online Mode.
You can find out the details of Employer’s Return e-Filing Services here: https://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/pdf/er_efiling_userguide.pdf.
IRD team will take a few weeks to check through before they send you an update through email and/or mail.
Submit IR56F for IRD (Step-by-Step)
Click on the Payroll module to access the IR56F section in Talenox.
In the Payroll module, head into Payroll settings > IR56F.
In the IR56F generation page, choose the IR56F YA (Year of Assessment) at the top, which by default is usually the latest YA.
Click “Generate IR56F for 20XX” to generate IR56F for the specific YA indicated.
Next, you’ll have to go through a few steps of checking and verification before you should make your IR56F submission to IRD.
Firstly, click on “Edit Employee info for 2022” to verify employer information showing in IR56 forms (Step 1).
Double check the Employer Info details and fill in the missing fields such as Authorised Person and the details of the authorised person.
Once Employer Info is updated, head back to the IR56F generation page, scroll down and click on “View/Edit” to view the IR56F forms of each individual employee (Step 2).
When you are viewing each employee’s IR56F form, double check the details to ensure the information keyed in is correct. If you are going to make changes, click on “Edit”.
To upload your Company Stamp, you can do so by heading to Profiles > Company Details to upload or follow this guide here:
Click “Save” after making changes.
You can “Download E-filing Form” for all employees in the company after you have checked through all the forms.
Submit IR56F for IRD (Step-by-Step Video)
For more information about IR56F and other tax forms, please refer to: https://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/tax/ere.htm.
After generating and submission of IR56F forms, you can now choose to publish individual tax forms to employees via email.
Have a great tax submission season! 😎