Accounting and audit support in Bahrain

Bahrain answers the audit question through company law rather than through a tax return, because there is no general corporate income tax to hang it on. The duty is written into the company's own constitution, and that is why no turnover figure releases anyone from it.

Because the obligation comes from company law, the shape of the Bahraini year differs from its neighbours. What this looks like away from any single country sits at accounting support. Our Bahrain page holds the remainder of the work we do here.

What the company law fixes

• The memorandum of association must provide for the appointment of an auditor, or more, by the ordinary general assembly every year.
• The managers prepare the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and a report on the year's activity within at least three months of the year end, and they sign all three.
• Within six months of the year end they send the ministry a copy each of the balance sheet, the profit and loss account, the annual report, and either the auditor's report or a signed and stamped letter from the auditor on the company's financial position in the ministry's circulated format.
• Where the loss exceeds half the capital, the auditor's signed report has to go with that file.
• The general assembly meets at least once a year within the six months following the year end, called by registered mail at least twenty-one days ahead.

What the auditor owes, and to whom

To the ministry

Copies of all reports and remarks, financial or administrative, whatever audience they were written for. This is the part that surprises owners arriving from elsewhere in the region.

To the assembly

Attendance, the report read aloud, and an opinion on every matter touching the work — the balance sheet above all. Each partner may discuss it and ask for clarification.

In independence

The auditor may not be a director, a manager, anyone supervising the accounts, or a second-degree relative of such a person, and may not deal in the company's shares during the term.

And afterwards

No seat on the board and no place on the staff for two years after discharge. A claim against the auditor for damage caused by mistakes lapses one year after the assembly at which the report was read.

The tax calendar here is a value added tax calendar

Registration becomes compulsory once annual taxable supplies pass 37,500 dinars, and is open voluntarily from 18,750 dinars of supplies or of expenses. Returns are quarterly below three million dinars of annual supplies and monthly above it. A resident with under 100,000 dinars of total annual supplies that is not inside a group may ask to file once a year. Every return falls due by the end of the month that follows the period.

Sources: the auditor in the memorandum, the three-month and six-month dates, the ministry copies, independence and the one-year claim window — articles 217 to 222, 283, 286 and 287 of the Commercial Companies Law, decree-law 21/2001 as amended; registration and filing periods — the National Bureau for Revenue.