BIR Deadlines for December 2026: Filing Calendar and Year-End 2316 Prep

December 2026’s regular BIR compliance load is unusually light for a calendar-year taxpayer — just the Documentary Stamp Tax return for November-executed documents and the monthly withholding remittance for November payments — but the month carries a heavier task no BIR form due-date lists: reconciling the payroll and payee data that feeds BIR Form 2316 and the 1604-C/1604-E/1604-F annual returns, due in early 2027. One of December’s two routine dates lands on a weekend and shifts forward.

For the full-year schedule these dates sit inside, see 2026 BIR Tax Filing Deadlines Calendar; for the previous month’s obligations, see BIR Deadlines for November 2026; and for the mechanics of the weekend/holiday shift applied throughout this guide, see The BIR Weekend and Holiday Deadline-Shift Rule.

What’s regularly due in December 2026? #

Only two recurring obligations land in December 2026 for most calendar-year taxpayers: the Documentary Stamp Tax return for November-executed documents, and the monthly withholding remittance for November payments. No quarterly VAT, percentage tax, expanded withholding, or income tax return has a statutory due date inside December — the third-quarter obligations already cleared in October and November, and fourth-quarter returns don’t fall due until late January or later in 2027.

Nothing from the quarterly calendar — BIR Form 2550Q, 2551Q, RELIEF SLSP, 1601-EQ, 1601-FQ, or QAP — carries a December 2026 due date; the fourth quarter of 2026 doesn’t close until December 31, and those returns fall due in late January and February 2027. As with every month in 2026, the monthly VAT return (BIR Form 2550M) does not appear either, since it was removed for most VAT-registered taxpayers under the Ease of Paying Taxes (EOPT) Act, Republic Act No. 11976 — see BIR Deadlines for October 2026 for that change in full. For BIR Form 2000 itself, see Documentary Stamp Tax: What It Is and When BIR Form 2000 Applies for which transactions actually trigger this monthly filing.

How does December 2026’s calendar actually shift these dates? #

Of the two statutory dates above, only BIR Form 2000’s December 5 due date lands on a non-working day once checked against the actual 2026 calendar — the withholding remittance falls on an ordinary weekday and doesn’t move. Under Revenue Memorandum Circular (RMC) No. 65-2016, issued June 23, 2016 and still the operative administrative basis for the shift, a deadline that falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or declared holiday moves to the next working day. As tax-alert coverage of that circular put it at the time:

“if [the] deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday or a holiday, this shall be moved to the next business day… This rule applies in all cases whether for eFPS, eBIR Form, and manual filers.”

Here is how each December 2026 date actually resolves:

The BIR Form 2000 shift is a straightforward two-day case: December 5, 2026 is confirmed a Saturday, and the next calendar day, Sunday, December 6, is also non-working, so under RMC No. 65-2016’s walk-forward rule the check continues to Monday, December 7, 2026 — a day that is not a declared regular or special holiday under the presidential proclamation governing the Philippines’ 2026 holiday calendar, so the walk stops there.

Two well-known Philippine holidays fall inside December 2026 — Christmas Day (December 25, a Friday) and Rizal Day (December 30, a Wednesday) — but neither sits adjacent to either of this month’s statutory due dates, so neither triggers a shift this month. That’s a useful contrast with November, where Bonifacio Day (November 30, a Monday) pushed the Q3 corporate income tax return two calendar days past its stated date; see BIR Deadlines for November 2026 for that stacked case.

Has the BIR issued any December 2026-specific deadline extension? #

No December 2026-specific deadline extension has been identified as of this writing, September 24, 2026 — the dates above are the regular statutory schedule, adjusted only for the ordinary weekend/holiday mechanic, not a discretionary relief measure. Earlier in 2026, the BIR issued RMC No. 89-2026 and RMC No. 95-2026 to extend deadlines that fell between August 10 and 16, 2026 for taxpayers under named Revenue District Offices and Large Taxpayer divisions affected by Southwest Monsoon (“Habagat”) flooding and a related eBIRForms Offline Package outage — see RMC No. 89-2026 and RMC No. 95-2026. Both circulars were tied to a specific, named disruption and closed out before September began; neither one, nor any successor circular found through this guide’s research, reaches into December.

If a new weather event, system outage, or other disruption prompts the BIR to issue a December-specific circular before these dates arrive, it would supersede the regular schedule only for the taxpayers and dates it explicitly names, the same pattern the August extensions followed. Always check the BIR’s own published advisories (bir.gov.ph) close to each date, since a circular can be issued with little lead time.

Why December also matters beyond the routine calendar: year-end 2316 and 1604 prep #

December’s light statutory calendar is misleading if it’s read as a light workload — it’s the last full calendar month before employers must furnish BIR Form 2316 to every employee and file BIR Form 1604-C with its Alphalist of Employees, both due on or before January 31, 2027, with BIR Form 1604-E following on March 1, 2027. Unlike the routine monthly and quarterly filings above, none of these annual returns has a December due date of its own — but the data they require (full-year compensation, final withholding, and cumulative tax withheld per employee and payee) is exactly what December’s payroll runs, 13th-month pay computations, and year-end adjustments finalize.

BIR Form 2316, the Certificate of Compensation Payment/Tax Withheld, is issued to every employee and must reconcile line-for-line with the Alphalist of Employees filed alongside BIR Form 1604-C. BIR Form 1604-E, covering expanded withholding on suppliers and professionals, has a later March 1 deadline under Revenue Regulations No. 11-2018, giving withholding agents extra time to reconcile the larger volume of payee and ATC-code data that return typically involves — see BIR Annual Alphalist: BIR Form 1604-C, 1604-E, and 1604-F Explained for the full breakdown of all three annual returns, and What Is BIR Form 2316? for the certificate itself.

A worked example of what December prep actually looks like: a business with 8 rank-and-file employees closes its December 2026 payroll run and, before year-end, checks that the sum of the 12 monthly BIR Form 1601-C remittances filed for each employee during 2026 (including the year-end adjustment computed from actual 13th-month pay and any final-quarter salary changes) equals the cumulative “Total Amount of Taxes Withheld” figure it is about to enter on each employee’s BIR Form 2316. A mismatch caught in December — before the certificate is issued and the alphalist is filed — is a data correction; the same mismatch caught after January 31 is a late or amended filing under BIR Form 1604-C, which carries the same Section 250 penalty exposure as any other missed information return.

Running that reconciliation in December, rather than in the last week of January, is what turns the routine year-end close into a controlled process instead of a scramble against the January 31 deadline.

A worked example: what a missed December 7 deadline actually costs #

A trading company that pays P150 documentary stamp tax on a promissory note executed and delivered in November 2026 files and pays BIR Form 2000 twelve days late, on December 19, 2026, instead of the actual, shifted deadline of December 7, 2026 established above. Confusing the original December 5 statutory date, the shifted December 7 deadline, and the date the return actually gets filed is the same kind of gap that turns an on-time filer into a late one. Applying the two civil additions the NIRC imposes on unpaid tax:

• Section 248 surcharge (25%): ₱150 × 25% = ₱37.50
• Section 249 interest (12% per annum, the rate commonly applied since the TRAIN Law amendments): ₱150 × 12% × (12 ÷ 365) = ₱0.59
• Total civil additions on top of the ₱150 basic tax: ₱38.09

As the NIRC itself states the basis for the surcharge:

“There shall be imposed, in addition to the tax required to be paid, a penalty equivalent to twenty-five percent (25%) of the amount due, in the following cases: (1) Failure to file any return and pay the tax due thereon as required under the provisions of this Code or rules and regulations on the date prescribed…”

— Section 248(A), National Internal Revenue Code (NIRC), as amended

That total does not include any separate compromise penalty the BIR may propose under Revenue Memorandum Order No. 7-2015 for the late filing itself — that schedule is a consensual amount tied to the specific violation and tax bracket involved, not a fixed percentage, so it is not computed here. Even on a small-value document like this one, the point stands regardless of amount: the surcharge and interest clock starts running from December 7, 2026 (the actual shifted deadline), not from the original December 5 weekend date — confusing which date the penalty clock starts from is a common, avoidable error, whether the tax involved is ₱150 or ₱150,000.

Frequently asked questions #

What BIR filings are due in December 2026? #

For a calendar-year taxpayer, December 2026 carries only two recurring obligations: the Documentary Stamp Tax return (BIR Form 2000) for documents executed in November 2026, and the monthly withholding remittance (BIR Form 0619-E and BIR Form 1601-C) for November 2026 income payments. No quarterly return has a statutory date inside December 2026.

Why does the BIR Form 2000 deadline move from December 5 to December 7, 2026? #

December 5, 2026 falls on a Saturday and December 6, 2026 falls on a Sunday, both non-working days, so under Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 65-2016’s next-working-day rule the deadline walks forward to Monday, December 7, 2026, which is not a declared holiday.

Do Christmas Day or Rizal Day shift any December 2026 BIR deadline? #

No. Christmas Day, December 25, 2026, falls on a Friday, and Rizal Day, December 30, 2026, falls on a Wednesday. Neither date sits next to a statutory BIR due date in December 2026, so neither holiday triggers a weekend/holiday shift this month.

When is BIR Form 2316 due for calendar year 2026, and why should employers start in December? #

BIR Form 2316, the employee’s certificate of compensation and tax withheld, is due on or before January 31, 2027, together with BIR Form 1604-C and its Alphalist of Employees. Because that deadline covers the full 2026 calendar year, December is the last full month employers have to reconcile payroll records, finalize year-end adjustments, and check that every employee’s cumulative withholding matches remittances filed during the year before figures get locked into the certificate.

Has the BIR announced any deadline extension specific to December 2026? #

As of this writing on September 24, 2026, no BIR revenue memorandum circular specifically extending a December 2026 deadline has been identified. The dates in this guide are the regular statutory due dates adjusted only for the ordinary weekend/holiday shift under RMC No. 65-2016, and remain subject to change if the BIR issues a new circular.

Summary #

December 2026’s regular BIR calendar is the lightest of the fourth quarter — just the DST return for November documents (BIR Form 2000, shifting from December 5 to December 7) and the November withholding remittance (BIR Form 0619-E/1601-C, staying on December 10) — with neither Christmas Day nor Rizal Day close enough to either date to trigger a further shift. That light routine calendar is exactly why December carries a different kind of workload: reconciling payroll and payee data now, ahead of the January 31, 2027 deadline for BIR Form 2316 and BIR Form 1604-C and the March 1, 2027 deadline for BIR Form 1604-E, turns a January scramble into a controlled year-end close. No December-specific BIR extension has been identified as of September 24, 2026. For the mechanics behind the weekend/holiday shift itself, see The BIR Weekend and Holiday Deadline-Shift Rule, and for how these dates fit the rest of the year, see the 2026 BIR Tax Filing Deadlines Calendar.