Alphabetical listing of employees and payees submitted to the BIR with the annual withholding tax returns, detailing income payments and taxes withheld.
The Alphalist is a required attachment to the BIR's annual information returns (such as 1604CF). It lists every employee or payee alphabetically by surname, showing their TIN, annual gross income paid, tax withheld, and other relevant details. For employers, this covers all employees who received compensation during the year. For businesses that pay professional fees or rental, it includes all payees subject to expanded withholding tax.
The Alphalist must be submitted in a specific BIR-prescribed data file format (typically a DAT file generated by the BIR's Alphalist Data Entry and Validation Module or compatible accounting software). Paper submission is generally no longer accepted for employers with more than 10 employees.
In practice: Kumikita Retail Corp. in Pasig has 28 employees. Its payroll system generates the Alphalist in BIR-prescribed format listing all 28 employees, their TINs, and 2025 compensation details. The file is validated using BIR's module before being attached to the January 31 1604CF filing. Any employee with a missing or invalid TIN flagged by the validator must be resolved before submission.
Why it matters: An inaccurate Alphalist — wrong TINs, mismatched names, incorrect compensation amounts — can result in the entire 1604CF being rejected or penalties being assessed. It is also used by the BIR to verify whether employees who claimed substituted filing (and thus did not file their own ITR) are accurately covered. Employees with discrepancies may be required to file their own returns, creating follow-up work for HR departments.
Alphalist data is also submitted as part of the SAWT (Summary Alphalist of Withholding Tax) for businesses paying expanded withholding taxes to multiple payees during the year.