BIR Form 2305: How to Update Your Civil Status, Dependents, or Employer Information

BIR Form 2305, the Certificate of Update of Exemption and of Employer’s and Employee’s Information, is the form an employee files to update their civil status, dependents, or current employer on record with the BIR. It’s filed through the employer’s HR or payroll department, which forwards it to the employee’s Revenue District Office (RDO). One common misconception needs correcting up front: since the TRAIN Law repealed personal and additional exemptions effective January 1, 2018, adding or removing a dependent on BIR Form 2305 no longer changes the amount of tax withheld from an employee’s pay — the form still exists, but the exemption amounts it once fed into the withholding computation don’t.

Why “updating dependents” no longer changes withholding #

Before TRAIN, a married employee got a ₱50,000 personal exemption plus ₱25,000 per qualified dependent (capped at four), and BIR Form 2305 was the form that reported those dependents to lock in the lower withholding — that entire exemption system is gone. Republic Act (RA) No. 10963, the TRAIN Law, repealed the underlying provision outright:

“Section 35 of the NIRC, as amended, is hereby repealed.”

That single line eliminated both the basic personal exemption and the additional exemption per dependent starting with taxable year 2018. In its place, the law raised the zero-tax bracket so that the first ₱250,000 of annual taxable income is automatically exempt for every individual taxpayer, married or single, with or without dependents — see Are Personal and Additional Exemptions Still Allowed on Your BIR Income Tax Return? for the full history of that repeal, and How to Compute Individual Income Tax Using the BIR Graduated Tax Table for how the resulting bracket works today. Because the exemption amounts a dependent used to unlock no longer exist, listing a dependent on BIR Form 2305 today is a record-keeping entry, not a withholding-tax lever — an employer can’t legally reduce an employee’s withholding because the employee has three children rather than none.

What the form is still actually used for #

BIR Form 2305 still serves three practical purposes even without the old exemption mechanics: recording a change in civil status, updating which employer is currently withholding on an employee’s behalf, and keeping the BIR’s registration data accurate for audit and cross-matching purposes. The table below breaks down the situations that still call for filing it.

An employee who is a Minimum Wage Earner (MWE) should still keep their status accurate through their employer, since MWE exemption is a separate, still-active rule under the NIRC unrelated to the dependent exemptions TRAIN removed — see Minimum Wage Earners and BIR Form 2316 for how that exemption works.

BIR Form 2305 vs. BIR Form 1905: who files which #

An employee routes BIR Form 2305 through their employer, while a self-employed individual or professional who needs to update their own registration details files BIR Form 1905 directly with their RDO — the two forms cover overlapping ground for different taxpayer types. BIR Form 2305 is specifically the employee-side update, submitted to and processed by the employer’s payroll or HR team before it reaches the RDO. A freelancer, sole proprietor, or professional with no employer relationship uses BIR Form 1905 instead to update civil status, registered address, RDO, or other registration information directly. An individual who is both employed and separately registered as self-employed (a mixed income earner) may need to touch both forms depending on which registration record the update affects.

Worked example: an employee who gets married mid-year #

An employee is registered as single with her employer’s payroll system as of January. She marries in June and, following her HR department’s process, files BIR Form 2305 that same month, submitting a copy of her PSA marriage certificate along with the form. Her employer updates her civil status on file and forwards the update to her RDO. Because the additional exemption for a spouse no longer exists post-TRAIN, her monthly withholding tax computation under the BIR withholding tax table doesn’t change as a result of the marriage itself — see How to Compute Withholding Tax on Compensation Using the BIR Withholding Tax Table for how that computation actually works today. What does change is that her BIR Form 2316 at year-end, and her registration record generally, now correctly shows “married” rather than “single,” which matters if she later needs to prove her civil status for a BIR transaction (an estate matter, a property transfer, or a separate registration under her married name).

Summary #

BIR Form 2305 updates an employee’s civil status, dependents, and current employer with the BIR, filed through the employer’s HR or payroll department. Since the TRAIN Law repealed Section 35 of the NIRC and eliminated personal and additional exemptions starting 2018, updating dependents on this form no longer reduces withholding tax — but keeping civil status and employer information current still matters for accurate BIR records, correct BIR Form 2316 issuance, and avoiding data mismatches down the line. Self-employed individuals with no employer use BIR Form 1905 instead for the equivalent update.