3 November 2026 · Bureau of Immigration and Securities and Exchange Commission

The General Information Sheet is a 9G document, not a formality

The Bureau of Immigration does not accept a General Information Sheet because the company has one. It accepts the sheet for the current year, stamped received by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a corporate 9G file that carries the previous year's copy stops at pre-screening.

The requirement sits in item 6 of the Bureau's 9(g) checklist, among the papers a corporate petitioner attaches: the SEC certificate of registration, the articles of incorporation, and the General Information Sheet for the current year stamped received by the SEC. A sole proprietor substitutes the DTI certificate of business name registration. There is no third option and no undertaking to follow later.

That one line produces more refusals than any other corporate document in a 9G file, because the sheet is annual and the stamp is the proof. A company that held its meeting in May and filed in June holds a 2026 sheet. A company that has not yet held its 2026 meeting holds a 2025 sheet, and 2025 is the previous year regardless of what else has been filed since.

The SEC clock runs from the meeting

The deadline is set by the meeting, not by the calendar year. Under SEC Memorandum Circular No. 2, series of 2024, all corporations file their GIS through eFAST within 30 calendar days from:

• the date of the actual annual stockholders' meeting, for a stock corporation;
• the date of the actual annual members' meeting, for a non-stock corporation;
• the anniversary date of the issuance of the SEC licence, for a foreign corporation.

A company that skips the meeting is not released from the filing. The eFAST guidance tells the filer to use the annual meeting date stated in the by-laws for the year covered, and to attach the affidavit of non-holding where no meeting took place. The SEC's announcement of the same circular states that one person corporations are not required to submit the GIS.

What the sheet has to reconcile

The GIS is the Commission's annual snapshot of ownership and control: stockholders, directors, officers, beneficial owners and the external auditor, each reconciling with the stock and transfer book. A sheet copied from last year with a changed officer list is the ordinary failure, and it surfaces after the SEC has received it, which moves the problem to an amendment.

The visa officer is not auditing corporate records. The stamped current year sheet shows that whoever signed the joint letter and the certification of employee numbers had authority to bind the company. That is why a previous year's copy is refused rather than queried.

Where the file stops, and what it costs

Pre-screening comes first: the documents go to the Central Receiving Unit before any fee is assessed. A corporate petition with a stale GIS is incomplete at that point, so it does not reach the hearing, and the file is rebuilt and submitted again. The Bureau's published table for a one year 9G is ₱10,130 for the principal at a non-Top 1,000 corporation and ₱10,630 at a Top 1,000 corporation, plus US$50 for a one year ACR I-Card. The table is footnoted as updated 6 March 2014.

The SEC side of the penalty

Late GIS is assessed per report under SEC Memorandum Circular No. 6, series of 2024, on a scale set by retained earnings and by the number of prior offenses. For a domestic stock corporation in the lowest retained earnings bracket the base fine is ₱5,000 on a first offense, and later brackets and repeat offenses raise it, with a monthly component of ₱500 or ₱1,000 per month of delay depending on the bracket. SEC Memorandum Circular No. 16, series of 2026 suspended the monthly component from 14 May 2026 to 31 December 2026. The base fine continues, and the monthly penalty returns on 1 January 2027 without any further issuance. Nothing in that suspension touches the filing obligation or the Bureau's checklist.

The order that works

Hold the meeting, file the GIS through eFAST inside the 30 days, keep the stamped received copy, then build the 9G. Where the meeting has slipped, the Alien Employment Permit and its publication, and the rest of the corporate set can still be assembled in parallel. The visa file is not complete until the current year sheet exists in stamped form, and a petitioner who cannot produce it has a corporate housekeeping problem that the Bureau processes as a documentary one.