Cancel a domestic helper Work Permit when leaving Singapore

Short answer: Decide transfer or repatriation first, settle her pay and buy her ticket, then cancel her Work Permit in MOM's FDW eService within a week of her last working day. She has to fly within 2 weeks of the cancellation, and the levy bills until the day before you cancel, whatever happens to your own EP.

Exit threads on r/askSingapore tend to forget the helper entirely, right up until levy invoices keep landing after the family has already flown. What hiring costs in the first place is on hiring an MDW. This guide is the cancel-when-leaving layer that sits beside your own leaving playbook.

The thing to hold on to is that you remain her employer until her Work Permit is cancelled, or until a new employer's permit is issued if she transfers. Salary, levy, insurance and security bond obligations don't quietly switch off on the date your own EP is cancelled. Your HR is handling your pass, not hers.

The order that hurts least

1. Decide transfer to a new employer versus going home, and decide it with her. Transfer paperwork is not the same as a straight cancel, and this one choice sets the shape of everything after it.
2. Agree her last working day. If you need her for packing and childcare, that's your last day in the flat, because she can't work once the permit is cancelled.
3. Settle final salary, rest days she worked and anything your contract promises, in writing. An unresolved pay question is what turns a routine bond conversation into an airport scene.
4. Book her flight for a date within 2 weeks of when you'll cancel, after checking the airline's and her home country's requirements.
5. Cancel in FDW eService within 1 week after her last day of work, print the Special Pass and give it to her.
6. Cut the Work Permit card in half once the permit is cancelled. After she's gone, keep your levy GIRO account funded for the final bill and watch for the bond discharge letter.
7. Keep the paperwork with your IR21, lease and shipping files. Exit audits love paper, and this is the cheapest file you'll ever keep.

Transfer or send her home

There are three routes, and they run on different paperwork and different clocks.

Talk to her before you talk to agencies. MOM's first step for an agency transfer is checking she's agreeable to it, and in a direct transfer she signs the declaration form with her new employer, so nothing moves without her.

Direct transfer to a family you know

This works best when a friend or colleague wants to take her on. Your side of it:

1. Send her for her six-monthly medical examination if she hasn't had it.
2. Wait for the transfer request, which MOM emails to you, then approve it in FDW eService.
3. Pay levy up to the date the new employer issues her Work Permit. Yours is then cancelled automatically and your levy billing stops.
4. Cut the old card in half and throw it away.
5. MOM discharges your security bond 1 week after she starts working for the new employer and tells you by post.

The new employer has to apply at least 30 days before her current permit expires, and her permit needs more than 30 days left on it. They get an outcome within a week, and the new permit has to be issued within 21 days of approval or by her current permit's expiry date, whichever is earlier. If her permit is close to expiry, you can ask for a short extension (see below).

The catch for a leaving family is that she's still your employee, living at your address, until the new permit is issued. If your flight comes first, read the section on flying before she does.

Transfer through an employment agency

If an agency agrees to find her a new employer, you authorise it to cancel her Work Permit for the transfer. From then on the agency is responsible for her until she's placed: accommodation, adequate food, medical treatment and medical insurance of at least S$60,000. If she doesn't find an employer before her Special Pass expires (it's issued with up to 30 days' validity), the agency pays for her ticket home.

MOM's agency transfer page links to a list of agencies willing to take on this responsibility. Agree the hand-over by email and keep a copy, which is MOM's own advice, and ask for the agency's charges to you in the same email.

If no agency will take her on, you can still try a direct transfer. If that doesn't work out, or she no longer wants to be transferred, you cancel and send her home. You stay responsible for her accommodation, food and medical treatment until she leaves Singapore.

Before you cancel

MOM's checklist for sending a helper home, in the order it actually happens:

1. Agree her last day of work with her.
2. Settle every outstanding employment issue she raises, including her salary.
3. Check her passport is valid.
4. Agree in writing on the transit arrangements (connecting flights, layover hours) and the allowance she needs to get through the transit.
5. Buy her an air ticket that includes check-in luggage, and pay for connecting transport to the international port of entry in her home country nearest to her hometown. Her departure date has to be within 2 weeks of the Work Permit cancellation.
6. Before booking, check the airline's boarding requirements, such as health or visa rules, and her home country's entry requirements on its embassy website. If she doesn't meet the airline's rules she may not be allowed to board.
7. Get her to acknowledge the transport payment in writing. MOM suggests this to head off disputes.

If she'd rather fly somewhere other than home and you both agree, that's allowed. You declare it on the cancellation page in FDW eService and make sure she has an entry visa for that country if she needs one.

Her final pay

Salary is due no later than 7 days after the end of each salary period. For the last one, settle it before you cancel, which is what MOM's checklist asks. Not paying her salary on time is one of the grounds on which MOM can forfeit your S$5,000 security bond.

MOM encourages paying into her own bank account, which shouldn't be a joint account with you, and if she asks for a bank transfer you have to use one. If you pay cash, both of you sign each salary record. You can't hold on to her money, bank book or bank card, even if she asks you to.

What else goes on the final payslip:

• Rest days she worked. Each rest day she worked instead of taking it is owed at least 1 day's salary on top of her basic pay. At least one rest day a month can't be paid off this way. If she couldn't take it, MOM lets it be deferred by up to a month, so if she's carrying one, make sure she gets it before her last day.
• Notice. MDWs aren't covered by the Employment Act, so notice comes from your contract. Either of you can end it by giving the notice the contract states. If that notice can't be given, whoever ends the employment pays salary in lieu, and the two of you can waive notice by mutual agreement.
• Leave pay and gratuity. Only what your contract promises, since without the Employment Act there's no statutory leave entitlement to fall back on. MOM encourages employers to agree a contract gratuity paid when the helper finishes, but it's something the two of you agree, not a set amount.

Write the final amounts down, say what each one covers, and have her sign it next to the transport acknowledgement.

How to cancel

Log in to MOM's FDW eService with Singpass. The employer, the sponsor or an employment agent can cancel, and an agent needs your authorisation in FDW eService before it can act for you. Cancellation is immediate.

If she's still in Singapore, cancel within 1 week after her last day of work. Print the Special Pass and give it to her. She shows the Special Pass and her passport to the immigration officer when she leaves, and she has to leave before it expires. Without a valid stay she faces an overstaying fine.

If she has already flown home, cancel within 1 week from her departure date. Pick “My helper or I wish to end this employment or she has gone home and will not be returning” as the cancellation reason.

Either way, once the permit is cancelled, cut the Work Permit card in half and throw it away so nobody can misuse it. Save or print what FDW eService shows when the cancellation goes through.

A permit that has already expired doesn't need cancelling, but if she's still in Singapore you need to request a Special Pass so she has a valid stay until she leaves. If her permit runs out shortly before you leave and you need her for a little longer, or you're waiting on a transfer, you can request a 4-week extension in FDW eService. Ask within 2 months before the permit expires, then cancel before the extended expiry date, or your bond may be forfeited.

If something goes wrong

• Her flight is cancelled or rescheduled. You can ask MOM to extend her stay, through myMOM Portal under Quick Menu, Request for Special Pass. Submit the request 7 to 14 days before her Special Pass expires, since late requests may bring overstaying fines and early ones are rejected. A flight rescheduled or cancelled by the airline, waiting for a new passport and being medically unfit to travel are among the accepted reasons, and you get an outcome within 7 days.
• You cancelled by mistake. MOM will consider reinstating the permit if it hasn't expired and she's still in Singapore. If approved you pay a S$35 fee, and levy is charged from the date it was cancelled.

When your family flies before she does

Once the Work Permit is cancelled, she cannot work, even while waiting to leave Singapore. Employing a helper without a valid Work Permit can bring a fine of S$5,000 to S$30,000, up to a year in jail, or both. So the cancellation follows her last working day, not your flight. If you need her until the end, her last working day is your last day in the flat, and her flight goes on that day or soon after.

She can also only work for you at the residential address declared to MOM. If the household moves into a serviced apartment for the final weeks, update your address with MOM before she works there. EP holders do it through the EP eService, and MOM wants a new address in within 2 weeks of the change.

If she's leaving after you, you're still responsible for her upkeep, meaning acceptable accommodation, adequate food and medical treatment, until she flies or a new employer takes over. She can't simply be left in an empty flat.

MOM does let you leave a helper with a friend, relative or employment agency while you're overseas, for up to one month. You notify MOM at least 7 days before you travel, keep paying her salary and levy, stay contactable, and nobody may ask her to work where she's staying. The rule is written for trips, but it can cover a short gap while a direct transfer finishes. If there's no new employer in sight, an agency transfer is the cleaner answer, because the agency takes over responsibility the day it cancels her permit.

Levy, bond and the bills that arrive after you leave

Levy. MOM charges it until 1 day before the cancellation, or in a direct transfer until the new employer's permit is issued. Each month's levy is due on the 17th of the following month, and a part month is billed at the daily rate: S$9.87 a day against S$300 a month at the normal first-helper rate. So the final bill lands after you've flown. Leave your GIRO account open and funded until it's deducted, because a failed deduction can add late payment penalty charges to the next bill. After that, end the GIRO arrangement on both sides: in MOM's Check and pay foreign worker levy eService (Update GIRO) and with your bank, which MOM can't do for you.

Security bond. Unless she's Malaysian, you'll have bought a S$5,000 bond for her. You're released from it only when you've cancelled the permit, she has returned home, and you haven't breached any bond conditions. Then it's usually discharged 1 week after she leaves Singapore. If she flew before you cancelled, it's discharged within 2 weeks after MOM verifies she has left. It can also be forfeited if you don't send her home once her permit is cancelled.

MOM tells you about the discharge by post, so make sure someone is collecting your Singapore mail. If there's no discharge letter a week after she left, submit a request to MOM online, and they'll email or call you with the outcome within a week.

Tax clearance for your helper

IRAS's tax clearance rules apply to all work pass holders, so don't assume your helper is outside them. Its exceptions include a non-citizen who earned less than S$21,000 a year and worked 183 days or more in a calendar year, 183 days or more across a period straddling two years, or three continuous years or more. For any of those, Form IR21 isn't needed.

Those exceptions only apply if she wasn't employed by another Singapore employer in the year she stops working for you or the year before, so a helper who came to you by transfer recently may not qualify. If you're unsure, e-file Form IR21 on myTax Portal, and IRAS tells you straight away if clearance isn't required. Where it isn't, IRAS still expects her employment income reported on Form IR8A by 1 March of the following year.

If clearance is needed, IR21 has to be filed at least one month before her last day, and the withholding rules described in tax clearance when leaving apply to her final pay too. Check this early, before you promise her the full amount on her last day.

The parallel calendars people mix up

There are several clocks running at once during an exit, and they belong to different people. Confusing them is how the levy keeps billing.

Which is why you shouldn't book her repatriation flight on the assumption that your IR21 cash will free up in the same week. Different clock, different owner. Hiring costs sit on hiring an MDW, the wider exit operation on the leaving playbook, and the cash buffer you'll want, helper exit included, on leaving costs.