We have 2 categories of employees in Singapore – what are called “Part IV” employees and “non-Part IV” (for lack of better term). [Part IV is the section of the labour code regarding working time regulations]. I’ve checked the KB and it correctly mentions this nuance – although it should be more specific and explicit about it, particularly given that the thresholds for Part IV are quite low. Most EoR employees will be above the Part IV threshold.

The short answer is that what is stated below is (partially) correct in relation to Part IV employees. Your annual leave entitlement accrues based on your start date and your length of employment. You start to gain the right to annual leave only after 3 months, and then the statutory requirement is to grant “paid annual leave not later than 12 months after the end of every 12 months of continuous service”. In other words, if you started work on 1 February 2025, and you complete your first year of service by 1 February 2026, you have until February 2027 to claim the annual leave. Just as a note, this only applies to the statutory component. You have full flexibility for the non-statutory. As an additional note, statutory annual leave is only 7 days in the first year of employment, whereas this employee is getting 14.

However, this is likely academic anyways, as this employee is not a Part IV employee. His salary is 100k SGD salary and is therefore exempt from Part IV, you have flexibility to control how annual leave is taken/forfeited etc so there is no issue running a calendar year for a non-Part IV Singapore employee.