Who needs to file BIR Form 1700?

Individuals earning purely compensation income from one or more employers file BIR Form 1700, unless they qualify for substituted filing — which applies to most single-employer employees whose employer correctly withholds and files BIR Form 2316 on their behalf, making a separate BIR Form 1700 unnecessary for that employee.

What's the deadline for BIR Form 1700?

BIR Form 1700 follows the standard annual income tax return deadline of April 15 of the year following the taxable year being reported, the same deadline that applies to BIR Form 1701 and 1701A for other individual taxpayers.

Do I need to file BIR Form 1700 if I only had one employer all year?

Usually not. An employee with a single employer for the entire calendar year, whose income was correctly subjected to withholding tax and whose employer files BIR Form 2316 with the BIR on their behalf, generally qualifies for substituted filing and does not need to separately file BIR Form 1700.

When does an employee have to file BIR Form 1700 themselves instead of relying on substituted filing?

Common situations that disqualify an employee from substituted filing include having two or more employers within the same calendar year (whether concurrently or successively), having other non-compensation income not subject to final tax, or discovering that the employer failed to correctly withhold or remit tax — any of these means the employee must file their own BIR Form 1700.

What documents support a BIR Form 1700 filing?

The primary supporting document is BIR Form 2316 from each employer the individual worked for during the taxable year, since the compensation, withholding tax, and year-end adjustment figures reported on Form 1700 are drawn directly from the Form 2316 certificates issued by each employer.

How to File BIR Form 1700: Annual Income Tax Return for Pure Compensation Earners

BIR Form 1700 is the annual income tax return individuals earning purely compensation income file with the BIR — but most employees never actually file it themselves, because substituted filing lets a single employer’s BIR Form 2316 stand in for it. This guide covers who’s actually required to file BIR Form 1700 directly, and walks through the process for those who don’t qualify for substituted filing.

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Who actually has to file BIR Form 1700? #

BIR Form 1700 applies to individuals whose income is purely compensation — salaries, wages, and similar employment income — as opposed to BIR Form 1701A or 1701, which apply to self-employed individuals, professionals, and mixed income earners. But NIRC Section 51’s substituted filing mechanism means most pure compensation earners never personally submit a BIR Form 1700, because their employer’s BIR Form 2316 filing functions as the return on their behalf. See Substituted Filing with BIR Form 2316: Who Qualifies for the full qualifying criteria; the short version is that an employee needs a single employer for the full year, correctly withheld tax, and no other taxable income outside that employment to qualify.

You need to file BIR Form 1700 yourself if any of the following apply:

You had two or more employers during the same calendar year — whether at the same time or one after another.
You have other taxable income not covered by final withholding tax, in addition to your compensation.
Your employer failed to withhold correctly, or didn’t file BIR Form 2316 with the BIR on your behalf.
You want to claim additional deductions or corrections that substituted filing wouldn’t otherwise capture.

Step-by-step: filing BIR Form 1700 #

Gather BIR Form 2316 from every employer you worked for during the taxable year. Each certificate shows gross compensation, non-taxable benefits, tax withheld, and any year-end adjustment that employer already applied.
Consolidate the figures across all employers if you had more than one during the year — BIR Form 1700 reports your total compensation and total tax withheld for the full year, not employer by employer.
Compute your annual tax due using the graduated income tax rates under NIRC Section 24(A), then compare it against the total tax already withheld across all your employers for the year.
File BIR Form 1700 through eBIRForms or your assigned RDO by April 15 of the year following the taxable year, along with all supporting BIR Form 2316 certificates.
Pay any balance due, or note the excess if your total withholding exceeded your actual tax liability, following the standard remedies covered in BIR Remedies for Overpaid Tax.

Worked example: an employee with two employers in one year #

An employee who worked for Employer A from January through June, then moved to Employer B from July through December, cannot use substituted filing for that year even though each individual employer withheld tax correctly, because substituted filing requires a single employer for the full year.

	Employer A (Jan–Jun)	Employer B (Jul–Dec)	Combined
Gross compensation	₱360,000	₱420,000	₱780,000
Tax withheld	₱18,500	₱24,000	₱42,500

Each employer withheld tax as though that employee’s income for the year would be limited to what it alone paid — Employer A calculated withholding based on ₱360,000 of annual income, and Employer B based on ₱420,000, neither aware of the other. Once combined, the employee’s actual annual compensation of ₱780,000 falls into a higher bracket than either employer individually withheld for, which typically means additional tax is due when the employee files their own BIR Form 1700 and recomputes annual tax liability on the full, combined ₱780,000 figure — the exact reason two-employer situations are excluded from substituted filing in the first place. See BIR Form 2316 for Employees Who Changed Jobs Mid-Year for more on how the two certificates should be reconciled before filing.

How BIR Form 1700 relates to BIR Form 2316 #

BIR Form 2316 is the certificate an employer issues; BIR Form 1700 is the return an employee sometimes has to file using the information from one or more of those certificates — they are not interchangeable, and having a BIR Form 2316 doesn’t by itself mean substituted filing applies. See BIR Form 2316 vs BIR Form 1700: Do You Still Need to File Your Own Income Tax Return? for a fuller comparison of when each document is the end of the story and when it’s only the starting point for a BIR Form 1700 filing.

Summary #

BIR Form 1700 is the annual return for pure compensation earners, but substituted filing means most single-employer employees never file it themselves. Anyone with two or more employers in a year, other non-final-tax income, or an employer that mishandled withholding needs to consolidate every BIR Form 2316 they received, compute annual tax due on the combined figure, and file BIR Form 1700 by April 15 — the same deadline that applies to the self-employed individual returns.