Alphalist Guide for Employers in the Philippines

If you pay salaries or you withhold tax on payments to suppliers and professionals, the alphalist is the report that ties your whole year of withholding together. It's an alphabetical list — of your employees, your payees, or both — that consolidates everything you withheld over the year and reconciles it to what you remitted. Where the quarterly returns and alphalists are the running record, the year-end alphalist is the annual truth: the BIR uses it to confirm that the tax withheld from each person, and reported on their certificate, matches what you actually paid over. This guide explains what the alphalist is, its annual cadence, how it relates to compensation withholding and to forms like the 1604C and 1604E, why it's submitted as a DAT file, and how it reconciles to your payroll and books.

The short answer

The alphalist is an annual, alphabetical roll-up of withholding. As an employer you file an alphalist of employees to support your year-end compensation information return; as a withholding agent on supplier and professional payments you file an alphalist of payees to support your year-end expanded-withholding return. Each one lists every person, their TIN, the income paid, and the tax withheld over the year, and the totals must equal what you reported and remitted. It goes in as a DAT file, and the work is far easier if your payroll and books already carry the per-person detail — the alphalist then becomes a consolidation, not a reconstruction.

Who this guide is for

• Employers who run payroll and have to file a year-end alphalist of employees with their compensation information return.
• Businesses that withhold on rent, professional fees, or contractor payments and file an annual alphalist of payees.
• Bookkeepers and accountants assembling alphalists for clients who want the year-end roll-up to tie to the books without a manual rebuild.

What the alphalist actually is

An alphalist is exactly what it sounds like — an alphabetical list of the people subject to withholding, with each person's registered name, TIN (in the BIR's 000-000-000-000 format), the income paid to them, and the tax withheld over the year. For employees it also carries compensation details and the year-end tax adjustment (the 'annualization' that squares each employee's withholding with their actual tax for the year). For payees it carries the income payment and the Alphanumeric Tax Code (ATC) for each type of payment, mirroring the certificates you issued.

The alphalist is the annual sibling of the quarterly alphalists. Where the QAP reports payees for a single quarter, the year-end alphalist consolidates the whole year and reconciles it. They aren't two unrelated reports — the quarterly filings are the running detail, and the alphalist is the year-end consolidation that has to agree with them.

The annual cadence: 1604C and 1604E

Withholding reporting layers over the year. Each period you remit and report the running detail; once a year you file an information return that summarizes the whole year, and the alphalist is the schedule attached to it. There are two main year-end information returns, each with its own alphalist:

• 1604C — Annual Information Return of Income Taxes Withheld on Compensation. The employer's year-end return for payroll withholding. Its alphalist lists every employee with their compensation and tax withheld for the year.
• 1604E — Annual Information Return of Creditable Income Taxes Withheld (Expanded). The withholding agent's year-end return for expanded/creditable withholding on supplier and professional payments. Its alphalist lists every payee.

The exact form numbers, versions, and filing schedule are set by current BIR issuances — this guide names the returns so you know which alphalist attaches to which, not when they're due. The point to hold onto is structural: the alphalist is never a standalone document; it's the per-person detail behind a year-end information return, and the two are filed as a set. For how withholding is computed and certified during the year, see the withholding tax guide.

Why the alphalist is a DAT file

An alphalist can run to hundreds or thousands of names, so the BIR receives it as a .DAT file — a strictly-structured, machine-readable data file — rather than a typed form. You build it in the BIR's offline alphalist data-entry tool (or generate it from software that writes the same layout), validate it through the BIR's validation module, and submit it through the prescribed electronic channel. As with every DAT file, the format is rigid: a malformed record, a bad TIN, or detail rows that don't foot to the control totals will fail validation. The full build-validate-submit mechanics are covered in the BIR DAT file guide.

How to prepare the alphalist, step by step

1. 1

   Close the year's withholding

   Make sure every payroll period and every withheld supplier payment for the year is recorded — the alphalist consolidates the whole year, so gaps show up as mismatches.

2. 2

   Run the year-end adjustment (for compensation)

   For employees, complete the year-end tax annualization so each employee's total withholding squares with their actual tax for the year.

3. 3

   Consolidate per person

   Roll up each employee or payee to a single line with their full-year income and tax withheld, classified by the correct ATC where applicable.

4. 4

   Verify names and TINs

   Check every registered name and TIN against your master records — name or TIN mismatches are the most common alphalist rejections.

5. 5

   Tie the totals to your returns and remittances

   Confirm the alphalist totals equal what your year-end information return reports and what you actually remitted across the year.

6. 6

   Generate, validate, submit, and archive

   Produce the DAT file in the BIR's alphalist tool (or compatible software), validate until it passes, submit through the BIR's channel, and keep the file and acknowledgement.

How this connects to your books

The alphalist is where a year of sloppy record-keeping comes due — or where a year of clean books pays off. Because it consolidates everything you withheld and forces it to reconcile, every missing TIN, every payment that wasn't tagged with a payee, every quarter where the remittance and the detail drifted apart, surfaces here. When your payroll runs and your supplier payments post to a real ledger — each one carrying the person, their TIN, the income, and the tax withheld — the alphalist is a year-end consolidation of data you already have, and it ties to the quarterly filings and to what you remitted because it came from the same source. When that detail lives in spreadsheets and emailed certificates instead, the alphalist becomes an annual reconstruction, and the validator is unforgiving about the gaps.

Common mistakes

• Treating the alphalist as a year-end project. Reconstructing a whole year of withholding in one sitting invites gaps; capture the detail as you go.
• Alphalist totals that don't tie to the return or remittances. The consolidated totals must equal what you reported and actually remitted — reconcile before generating the file.
• Wrong or missing TINs and name mismatches. A single bad reference can fail the whole DAT file; keep employee and payee master data clean year-round.
• Skipping the year-end compensation adjustment. For employees, omitting the annualization leaves the alphalist out of step with each person's actual tax.
• Filing the wrong alphalist with the wrong return. The compensation alphalist attaches to the compensation information return; the expanded one to the expanded return — don't cross them.