A company’s year in Ecuador: what gets filed and when

An Ecuadorian company answers to two different institutions with two different calendars: the Superintendencia de Compañías, Valores y Seguros, for its corporate life, and the Servicio de Rentas Internas, for its taxes. Nearly every expensive problem seen in the registry starts by losing sight of one of the two. This is the complete map.

The annual general meeting

The year's first milestone and the one holding up everything else. The ordinary general meeting must convene at least once a year, within the three months following the fiscal close. There the accounts, the balance sheet and the reports of the managers and the comisarios (the internal auditors of the accounts) are heard, the fate of the profits is decided and the other agenda items are handled.

Ley de Compañías, art. 234.

The order matters: the meeting approves the accounts, and those approved accounts are what gets filed with the Superintendencia in the next step.

The financial statements

The central obligation of the corporate year. The Ley de Compañías requires filing the financial statements within the first four months after the fiscal close: for most companies, through the end of April.

Ley de Compañías, art. 20.

They are prepared under the International Financial Reporting Standards, mandatory in the country by the Superintendencia's Resolution 08.G.DSC.010 (November 20, 2008), phased in between 2010 and 2012: first the securities market and the audit firms, then companies with assets over four million dollars, and finally everyone else.

These are the statements feeding the financial indicators on this directory's profiles and the rankings of the largest companies. That a company has gone years without filing them is, by itself, information.

Income tax

Filed once a year, on a date set by the ninth digit of the RUC, the taxpayer number: due dates stagger from the 10th to the 28th. Companies file in April; individuals, in March. Throughout the year, moreover, many companies pay advances and suffer withholdings later deducted from the tax that finally comes due.

Regulations to the Ley de Régimen Tributario Interno, art. 72: due dates from April 10 to 28 for companies and March 10 to 28 for individuals, by the ninth digit of the RUC.

VAT and withholdings

The VAT return is monthly for most taxpayers, with certain semiannual cases, and follows the same ninth-digit staggering. Whoever has been designated a withholding agent also files and pays what it withheld from third parties, and must hand over the corresponding withholding receipt.

Regulations to the Ley de Régimen Tributario Interno, art. 158 (monthly filing and semiannual cases) and following.

On each company profile of this directory, the tax status block states whether it stands as a withholding agent, as a special taxpayer (designated by the SRI for its size, with more obligations) and whether it must keep accounting books: three labels that completely change a business's calendar.

The annexes

Beyond the returns, the SRI requires detailed reports crossing what was declared against what was invoiced: the transactional annex (the detail of purchases and sales), the one on payroll withholdings and whichever sector annexes apply. They are the reason accounting and invoicing must square with each other: the annexes are precisely where a difference becomes visible.

Issuing, receiving and keeping receipts

Since November 29, 2022, electronic issuance has been the general rule for taxpayers required to issue invoices, per Resolution NAC-DGERCGC22-00000024 (Registro Oficial second supplement 80, June 9, 2022), which implemented what the Ley Orgánica para el Desarrollo Económico y Sostenibilidad Fiscal after the COVID-19 pandemic ordered (Registro Oficial supplement 587, November 29, 2021).

Three obligations coexist here, and usually only the first gets attention:

• Issuing the correct electronic receipt on every operation.
• Receiving and controlling the suppliers' ones: they are what supports the cost and allows deducting the VAT paid (the tax credit), and without them they do not exist for the books.
• Keeping both for a minimum of seven years, in their original format: the XML, not the PDF (Reglamento de Comprobantes de Venta, art. 41, amended by Executive Decree 99, Registro Oficial 467, December 29, 2023).

And a recent change to mind this year: since Resolution NAC-DGERCGC26-00000027, published in the Registro Oficial of July 28, 2026, every receipt must carry in its additional information the RUC of the invoicing system or service provider being used. The detail is in the electronic invoicing guide.

Keeping the RUC current

The RUC is not a number obtained and forgotten: it must be updated when what it describes changes (domicile, economic activity, opening or closing establishments, legal representative). If it is not updated, it shows from outside: claiming branches in five cities while registering a single open establishment is exactly the contradiction a prudent customer catches when verifying the company.

Before the Superintendencia

Beyond the financial statements, corporate life leaves a registry trail: the appointments of managers and the legal representative and their renewals, capital increases, changes of domicile or corporate purpose, bylaw reforms. Companies under supervision also pay an annual contribution to the Superintendencia, which the Superintendent sets each year on each company's real assets, capped at one per thousand (Ley de Compañías, art. 449).

What happens on noncompliance

The most serious consequence is not a fine: it is disappearance. Article 377 of the Ley de Compañías (item 7) empowers the Superintendencia to declare a company dissolved for two straight years of noncompliance with article 20, that is, for not filing financial statements two years in a row. A good share of the companies standing dissolved in the registry did not go bankrupt: they stopped reporting.

On the tax side, obligations past due and undisputed become enforceable and can be collected coactively, with the measures that allows. We explain it in what it means when a company owes the SRI. And what each registry status means is in the legal status guide.

This guide is a map, not a personalized calendar: the exact dates depend on the RUC's ninth digit, the regime and each taxpayer's designations, and the SRI publishes them every year. Each company's specific case gets settled with its accountant.