Penalty amounts, waiver periods, and their exact conditions change and are set by SSM. This page explains the general framework so you know what questions to ask — always confirm current figures and any active waiver directly with SSM or a company secretary before acting.
The statutory penalties
Under the Companies Act 2016, late lodgement of an Annual Return can carry statutory fines of up to RM50,000 against the company and every officer found in default, under Section 68(9), with additional daily default fines for continued non-compliance. These are the underlying legal penalties — separate from any administrative late lodgement fee charged simply for filing after the deadline.
Repeated non-filing and strike-off
Beyond fines, a company that fails to lodge Annual Returns for three or more consecutive years risks the Registrar initiating strike-off proceedings under provisions of the Companies Act 2016 covering both the Annual Return default itself and the Registrar's general strike-off powers. In practice, a struck-off company can face serious knock-on effects: disrupted banking relationships, complications with contracts and investor due diligence, and directors facing restrictions or personal exposure. This is generally treated as a materially more serious consequence than the late lodgement fee itself.
What a "fee waiver" actually means
During the MBRS 2.0 transition, SSM issued several time-limited administrative notices waiving the late lodgement fee for certain filings — typically financial statements and audited reports — submitted after the standard grace period but within a defined tolerance window (commonly referenced as roughly three months from the original due date, under SSM's Practice Directive framework). Waiver windows have appeared at several points around the MBRS 2.0 rollout, including periods in mid-to-late 2025 and again in early 2026, each announced separately by SSM with its own start and end dates.
A waiver removes the administrative late lodgement fee for filings made within the stated window. It does not, on its own, extend the underlying statutory due date under the Companies Act 2016 — that legal deadline stays where it was.
The distinction that matters most
This is worth restating plainly because it is easy to misread as "the deadline moved":
- The statutory due date — set by the Companies Act 2016 — does not change because of an administrative waiver notice.
- The late lodgement fee — the administrative charge for filing after that due date — is what gets waived, and only for filings made within SSM's stated window.
In other words: a waiver can save you money if you are already late, but it does not make you "not late," and it does not change your obligation to lodge on time going forward. Treat any announced waiver period as an opportunity to clear a backlog cheaply, not as a reason to deprioritise future on-time filing.
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If you have a backlog of overdue filings
- List every outstanding filing with its original statutory due date, not the date you first noticed it was overdue.
- Check whether a current SSM waiver notice applies to your filing type and whether you fall within its stated window — these windows are announced individually and do have end dates.
- Prioritise the filings closest to losing waiver eligibility, since these windows have historically had firm cut-off dates.
- Confirm your mTool version and taxonomy are current before attempting the filing, since a validation failure at this stage can push you past a waiver deadline unnecessarily — see our validation errors guide.