How to File BIR Form 1701A: Annual Income Tax Return for Freelancers in the Philippines (2026)

BIR Form 1701A for freelancers is the annual income tax return you file when your income for the year came purely from business or profession, with no employer anywhere in the picture. If you are a virtual assistant registered with the BIR as a self-employed single proprietor or a professional, and you are either on the 8% flat rate or on the graduated rates with the Optional Standard Deduction, this is your form. The deadline is April 15 of the year after the income year, and you file it through the Offline eBIRForms Package.

It is only two pages, and it is the shortest of the annual returns. The hard part is never the form itself. It is knowing which numbers go where, what you can claim as credits, and what it costs you if you file late. Below I go through who files 1701A, the exact deadline, how to compute your tax under both options, the filing steps, the new 1701-MS form the BIR added this year, and the penalties.

When I registered with the BIR as a self-employed single proprietor, I chose the 8% flat rate over the graduated rates. Not because someone told me to, but because it is simpler for me: no expense tracking, and no separate percentage tax return to file. Mas kaunting hassle. That single choice decides which half of Form 1701A you fill in, so I will walk you through both.

What is BIR Form 1701A and who files it?

Form 1701A is the BIR’s Annual Income Tax Return for Individuals Earning Income Purely from Business or Profession. The official form covers two groups: people on the graduated income tax rates who use the Optional Standard Deduction (OSD), and people who opted for the 8% flat income tax rate. If you are a freelancer or VA who did not work for an employer at any point in the year, you are almost certainly in one of those two groups.

The word purely is doing real work there. If you had even a few months of employment income during the year, you are a mixed income earner and you file Form 1701, not 1701A. Same thing if you claim itemized deductions, meaning your laptop, your internet, your co-working fees, receipt by receipt. Itemized deductions are only available on Form 1701. The trade-off is that 1701A asks almost nothing about your expenses, which is exactly why it is short.

Here is the quick sort.

Your situation	Annual return you file
Purely business or profession, 8% flat rate	1701A
Purely business or profession, graduated rates with OSD	1701A
Purely business or profession, graduated rates with itemized deductions	1701
A job plus freelancing in the same year (mixed income)	1701
Purely compensation, not covered by substituted filing	1700
Micro or small taxpayer who prefers the simplified return	1701-MS (optional)

If you are not sure which bucket you are in, look at your Certificate of Registration, the BIR Form 2303 you received when you registered. It lists your taxpayer type and your tax types, and it is the fastest way to confirm whether you are set up as a single proprietor or a professional. If you have not registered yet, start with my walkthrough of BIR registration for freelancers, kasi you cannot file 1701A without a TIN and an RDO code. And if you are still deciding between the two tax options, my comparison of the 8% flat tax versus the graduated rates goes deeper into the math.

When is the BIR Form 1701A deadline?

April 15 of each year, covering the income of the preceding year. That is the standing rule under Section 51(C)(1) of the Tax Code, and it is what the BIR prints on the form: the annual return is filed not later than the fifteenth day of the fourth month following the close of the calendar year.

There was one exception this year. Through Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 30-2026, dated April 14, 2026, the BIR moved the deadline for the 2025 annual income tax return from April 15 to May 15, 2026, along with the payment of the taxes due and the submission of attachments. The stated reason was Executive Order No. 110, s. 2026, which declared a state of national energy emergency, and the BIR wanted to give taxpayers room without penalties while rising oil prices were being felt. Treat that as a one-time extension, not a new normal. Unless the BIR issues another circular, your 2026 income is due on April 15, 2027.

The annual return is also the last of four filings, not the only one. You file Form 1701Q for the first three quarters, due May 15, August 15 and November 15. Those quarterly payments are not extra tax. They are advance payments credited against your annual tax due on lines 57 to 60 of Form 1701A. I laid out the whole year on one page in my freelancer tax deadline calendar if you want something to print and stick on the wall.

One more timing detail that a lot of people miss. If your tax due comes out above ₱2,000, you can split it into two equal installments: the first when you file, the second on or before October 15 of the same year. That is item 23 on the form and it comes from Section 56 of the Tax Code. It is a real cash flow option, not a loophole. Just remember the catch: miss the second installment and the whole unpaid balance becomes due immediately, with delinquency penalties counted from the original date.

What do you need before you fill out Form 1701A?

Five things. Gather them first and the form takes maybe twenty minutes.

• Your Certificate of Registration (Form 2303). It gives you your TIN with the branch code, your RDO code, and your taxpayer type. Item 7 of the return asks for your Alphanumeric Tax Code, and yours follows your setup: II015 for business income under 8%, II017 for income from profession under 8%, II012 for business income under graduated rates, and II014 for income from profession under graduated rates.
• Your total gross receipts for the year. This is money actually received during the year, taken from your books of accounts, not what you invoiced. Client payments that landed in your GCash, Wise, Payoneer or bank account all count, and yes, income received through an e-wallet is still taxable income. If your books are not registered yet, fix that first with my guide to registering your books of accounts.
• Your three quarterly filings and their confirmations. You need the total income tax you already paid for the first three quarters, which goes on line 58 as a credit against your annual tax due.
• Any BIR Form 2307 certificates from local clients. These are the creditable withholding tax certificates a Philippine client gives you when they withhold from your fee, and they go on lines 59 and 60. Most VAs with clients abroad have none of these, kasi a company in the US or Australia is not a Philippine withholding agent and has no duty to withhold for the BIR. Zero on that line is completely normal. Here is how Form 2307 works if a local client ever hands you one.
• The Offline eBIRForms Package, installed and updated. The current release is version 7.9.6.0, announced in Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 36-2026 on April 28, 2026. Download it from bir.gov.ph, never from a random link someone posted in a Facebook group. It runs on Windows only, which is a genuine problem if you work on a Mac.

What you do not need is a financial statement. Revenue Regulations No. 8-2018 says an individual who claims the OSD is not required to submit financial statements with the return, and Revenue Memorandum Order No. 23-2018 says the same for taxpayers on the 8% rate. You still have to keep registered books of accounts and issue proper invoices, so the paperwork does not disappear, it just does not get attached to this return. The one attachment that does apply to some of us is the SAWT, the Summary Alphalist of Withholding Taxes, which Revenue Regulations No. 2-2006 requires whenever you claim tax credits from 2307 certificates.

How do you compute what you owe on Form 1701A?

It depends on which tax option you are on, and the form splits cleanly in two so you only fill in one half. If you are on 8%, you use Part IV.B, items 47 to 56. If you are on graduated rates with OSD, you use Part IV.A, items 36 to 46. You never fill in both.

Under the 8% rate the math is short. Add your gross receipts and any other non-operating income, subtract ₱250,000, and multiply what is left by 8%. That ₱250,000 reduction sits on line 54, and it is available only to people earning purely from self-employment or profession. Mixed income earners do not get it, because the same ₱250,000 is already built into the first bracket of the graduated table applied to their salary.

Under graduated rates with OSD, you deduct a flat 40% of your gross receipts as your Optional Standard Deduction, no receipts required, then run the remainder through the tax table below. You also still owe the 3% percentage tax under Section 116, filed quarterly on Form 2551Q, which the 8% rate absorbs and the graduated route does not. That percentage tax is the part people forget when they compare the two options, and it is usually what decides the answer.

Taxable income	Tax due (effective January 1, 2023 onwards)
Not over ₱250,000	0%
Over ₱250,000 but not over ₱400,000	15% of the excess over ₱250,000
Over ₱400,000 but not over ₱800,000	₱22,500 plus 20% of the excess over ₱400,000
Over ₱800,000 but not over ₱2,000,000	₱102,500 plus 25% of the excess over ₱800,000
Over ₱2,000,000 but not over ₱8,000,000	₱402,500 plus 30% of the excess over ₱2,000,000
Over ₱8,000,000	₱2,202,500 plus 35% of the excess over ₱8,000,000

Here is the same freelancer both ways. Say you received ₱600,000 in client payments during the year and had no other income.

	8% flat rate	Graduated rates with OSD
Gross receipts	₱600,000	₱600,000
Deduction	₱250,000 reduction	40% OSD, ₱240,000
Taxable base	₱350,000	₱360,000
Income tax due	₱28,000	₱16,500
Percentage tax (3% of gross receipts)	None	₱18,000
Total for the year	₱28,000	₱34,500

At ₱600,000 a year the 8% route wins by ₱6,500 and saves you four extra returns. That gap narrows as your income climbs, and it flips once your deductible expenses get genuinely large, which is why the choice is worth redoing every year. One rule you cannot get around: the 8% option is not automatic. Revenue Regulations No. 8-2018 says that unless you signify the 8% election in your first quarterly return of the year, you are treated as having chosen the graduated rates, and that choice is irrevocable for the whole taxable year. It also resets every January, so you have to elect it again each year.

Whatever your tax due comes to, subtract what you already paid: prior year excess credits on line 57, your quarterly payments on line 58, and creditable withholding on lines 59 and 60. If you want the quarterly side worked through with real numbers, I did exactly that in my guide to computing your quarterly income tax.

How do you file BIR Form 1701A step by step?

Electronically, through the Offline eBIRForms Package, unless you are enrolled in eFPS. Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 20-2026 made that explicit for this filing season: electronic filing is the default, and manual filing is the exception, allowed only during a BIR system outage confirmed by an official advisory, with the Commissioner’s authorization for valid reasons, or when the form is not yet available electronically.

1. Install the current package. Download the Offline eBIRForms Package v7.9.6.0 from bir.gov.ph and install it on a Windows machine. Older versions get rejected, so check the version number weeks before the deadline, not on the day itself.
2. Open a new 1701A. Enter your TIN with its branch code and your RDO code, then pick BIR Form 1701A from the form list. The package pre-fills your details once your profile is saved, so the second year is faster than the first.
3. Fill in Part I. Taxpayer type (single proprietor or professional), your ATC, and item 19, the tax rate box, where you mark either graduated rates with OSD or the 8% rate. Getting item 19 wrong is the most common mistake, because it decides which half of page 2 the form expects you to complete.
4. Fill in your half of Part IV. Items 36 to 46 for OSD, items 47 to 56 for 8%. Then Part IV.C for your credits, and the form carries the totals up to Part II for you.
5. Validate, then submit. The package checks the arithmetic first. After you submit, you get a Tax Return Receipt Confirmation by email. That email is your proof of filing, so save it somewhere you will still find it in three years. On eFPS you get a Filing Reference Number instead.
6. Pay if there is tax due. You can pay online through the BIR ePay channels: LandBank’s Link.Biz Portal, DBP’s Pay Tax Online, UnionBank’s online facility, or GCash, Maya and cards through accredited aggregators. You can also pay over the counter at an Authorized Agent Bank. For the 2025 return, RMC 30-2026 confirmed that payment was accepted at the nearest Authorized Agent Bank regardless of your RDO’s jurisdiction.
7. Submit attachments through eAFS, if you have any. Under RMC 20-2026 the required attachments go through the eAFS system, and you keep the Transaction Reference Number it issues alongside your Tax Return Receipt Confirmation. Most 8% and OSD filers with no 2307 certificates have nothing to attach at all.

The whole thing is a one-sitting job if your books are current. It only turns into a nightmare when you are reconstructing a year of client payments on April 14, which is a mistake you make exactly once.

Should you file 1701A or the new BIR Form 1701-MS?

Either one. Form 1701A is still completely valid, and Form 1701-MS is an option, not a replacement. This is new enough that it confused a lot of freelancers during the 2026 filing season, so it is worth being precise about.

Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 20-2026, issued March 16, 2026, covered the availability of the revised annual income tax return forms and brought in BIR Form 1701-MS, the August 2024 Annual Income Tax Return for Individuals Classified as Micro or Small Taxpayers. Under that circular, micro and small taxpayers may use Form 1701-MS, 1701 or 1701A, regardless of what their Certificate of Registration says. The classification itself comes from Revenue Regulations No. 8-2024 under the Ease of Paying Taxes Act: micro means annual gross sales below ₱3,000,000, and small means ₱3,000,000 to below ₱20,000,000. Almost every freelance VA in the country is a micro taxpayer.

When it launched, 1701-MS was manual filing only, which made it a strange kind of upgrade: a simpler form that you had to physically bring somewhere. That changed on April 28, 2026, when Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 37-2026 added 1701-MS to the Offline eBIRForms Package version 7.9.6, so it can now be filed electronically like the rest of them.

The practical answer is boring in a good way: if you already file 1701A and it works for you, keep filing 1701A. The BIR was explicit that a taxpayer who already filed 1701 or 1701A electronically does not need to file 1701-MS on top of it, and there is no need to amend or refile. Before the next season, open both in eBIRForms and see which one asks you fewer questions. Filing the right form on time matters far more than filing the newest form.

What happens if you file BIR Form 1701A late?

Three charges stack on top of the tax itself: a surcharge, interest, and a compromise penalty. Section 248 of the Tax Code imposes a 25% surcharge on the amount due for failing to file and pay on time, Section 249 charges 12% interest per year on the unpaid tax from the due date until it is fully paid, and a compromise penalty is assessed from the schedule in Revenue Memorandum Order No. 7-2015.

There is real relief if you are small, and most of us are. Revenue Regulations No. 6-2024, issued under the Ease of Paying Taxes Act, cuts all three for micro and small taxpayers: the surcharge drops to 10%, the interest is halved to 6% per year, and the compromise penalty is 50% of the RMO 7-2015 amount. That is a meaningful difference for a solo freelancer, and it is one of the few tax changes in recent years that actually favors people at our size.

Put numbers on it. Say your annual tax due is ₱28,000 and you file three months late as a micro taxpayer. The surcharge is ₱2,800. Three months of interest at 6% a year works out to roughly ₱420. Unpaid tax of ₱28,000 falls in the band above ₱20,000 but not over ₱50,000 in the compromise schedule, which is ₱10,000, halved to ₱5,000. That is about ₱8,200 in penalties on a ₱28,000 bill, and none of it buys you anything.

Even a zero return has a price for being late. When there is no tax due, the compromise penalty is based on your gross sales instead, starting at ₱1,000 where gross sales do not exceed ₱50,000 and rising through ₱3,000 and ₱5,000 as the figure grows, again halved for micro and small taxpayers. Treat all of these as estimates, since your RDO computes the actual assessment. The takeaway is simple: file even if you cannot pay in full that day. The surcharge attaches to the failure to file and pay, so filing on time with a partial payment leaves you in a far better position than silence.

Frequently asked questions

Filing Form 1701A without the last-minute panic

Form 1701A is a short return with a long shadow. Once you know your tax option, your gross receipts for the year, and what you already paid in the quarters, the form is mostly transcription. The stress almost always comes from bookkeeping you did not do in January, never from the two pages you are filling in on April 14.

Here is what I would do if I were you, and it takes one evening. Open a spreadsheet, list every client payment you received this year with its date, and total the column. Then pull out your Certificate of Registration and note your ATC and your tax rate. Then install the current eBIRForms package now, while nothing is due, so that April is pure data entry. Being registered and filing properly is not the scary part of freelancing. It is the part that lets you take on bigger clients, sign real contracts, and prove your income when a bank or a landlord asks. Kaya mo ‘yan.

Sources

• Bureau of Internal Revenue, BIR Form No. 1701A, January 2018 (form coverage, items 19, 23, 36 to 65, and the tax rate tables) (accessed August 1, 2026)
• Bureau of Internal Revenue, Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 30-2026, extension of the 2025 annual income tax return deadline to May 15, 2026 (dated April 14, 2026; accessed August 1, 2026)
• Bureau of Internal Revenue, Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 36-2026, availability of the Offline eBIRForms Package version 7.9.6.0 and inclusion of BIR Form 1701-MS (dated April 28, 2026; accessed August 1, 2026)
• Bureau of Internal Revenue, Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 20-2026, annual income tax return filing guidelines for calendar year 2025 (issued March 16, 2026; accessed August 1, 2026)
• CloudCFO, BIR Issues Annual Income Tax Return Filing Guidelines for Calendar Year 2025 (summary of RMC 20-2026: electronic filing default, micro and small taxpayer form options, eAFS attachments) (published March 18, 2026; accessed August 1, 2026)
• PwC Philippines, Tax Alert No. 19 on RMC No. 36-2026 and RMC No. 37-2026 (electronic filing of BIR Form 1701-MS through eBIRForms 7.9.6) (accessed August 1, 2026)
• Bureau of Internal Revenue, Revenue Regulations No. 8-2018 digest (graduated rate tables, 8% option and election rule, 40% OSD, no financial statements for OSD, ₱2,000 installment rule, April 15 annual deadline) (issued February 20, 2018; accessed August 1, 2026)
• Bureau of Internal Revenue, Revenue Memorandum Order No. 23-2018 digest (8% availment rules, annual re-election, no financial statement attachment, no quarterly percentage tax return) (issued May 21, 2018; accessed August 1, 2026)
• MPM Consulting Services, Revenue Regulations No. 8-2024 on the classification of taxpayers (micro below ₱3,000,000, small ₱3,000,000 to below ₱20,000,000) (accessed August 1, 2026)
• MPM Consulting Services, Revenue Regulations No. 6-2024 on reduced interest and penalties for micro and small taxpayers (10% surcharge, 6% interest, 50% compromise penalty) (accessed August 1, 2026)
• Forvis Mazars Philippines, Penalties for tax return late filing (25% surcharge under Section 248, 12% interest under Section 249, RMO 7-2015 compromise penalty schedules) (accessed August 1, 2026)
• Revenue Regulations No. 2-2006, mandatory attachment of the Summary Alphalist of Withholding Taxes (SAWT) to returns with claimed creditable withholding tax credits (accessed August 1, 2026)
• MPM Consulting Services, CREATE Law tax rate changes effective July 1, 2023 (Section 116 percentage tax reverting from 1% to 3%) (accessed August 1, 2026)