Warehouse, plant or storage facility

An address you hold for storage, production or support, where no selling takes place. Lighter on tax documentation than a branch — and considerably harder on zoning and fire safety.

At a glance

BIR classification

Facility, under your existing TIN

Own invoice series

Not required — nothing is sold

Local business permit

Required — as a storage or industrial establishment

Where sales are taxed

Not here — unless it is a factory or plant

Typical lead time

3–8 weeks

The defining test

No sale is made and no invoice is issued from the address

Meet that test and the BIR treats the address as a facility. Break it once — a single walk-in sale from the bodega — and it has become a branch that was never registered as one.

Warehouse or bodega Storage yard Cold storage Production plant Assembly or packing line Garage or motor pool Administrative back office

Two agencies, two checklists

Less BIR documentation than a branch. Considerably more scrutiny from the city on where the building sits and what is inside it.

Bureau of Internal Revenue

BIR guidelines for a facility

Facilities are registered too. File at the RDO covering the facility address and declare it as a facility, not a branch — Form 1903 for corporations and partnerships, Form 1901 for a sole proprietor.
Form 1905 to add it to your record. The facility is tied to your existing TIN under its own code, so the district knows the address is yours.
Certificate of Registration on site. Posted at the facility, like any registered establishment.
No Authority to Print, no invoice series. Nothing is sold from the address, so no sales documents are issued from it.
Document every movement of goods. Delivery receipts, stock transfer slips or transfer memoranda between head office, branches and the warehouse. This is the first thing an examiner asks to see.
The stock counts as inventory. Goods held at the facility form part of your annual inventory list submission — usually due within 30 days of your financial year end.
No annual registration fee. Removed under the Ease of Paying Taxes Act. Registering the facility is still mandatory.
Reclassify before you sell. If the address will ever take an order or issue an invoice, register it as a branch first. Retrofitting the registration after the fact is a penalty exercise.

City or municipality

LGU guidelines for a business permit

It needs its own permit. “Nothing is sold here” does not exempt the address. The city permits the establishment, not the selling.
Zoning is the hard gate. Warehouses and plants generally require industrial or commercial-industrial zoning. Residential and purely commercial retail zones are routinely refused.
Declared as warehousing or storage. Because no sales are recorded there, the local tax is usually a fixed or graduated amount for the establishment rather than a percentage of gross sales.
Fire safety is assessed on contents. The Bureau of Fire Protection looks at what you store — combustibles, chemicals, aerosols, LPG, paper stock — and sets requirements for sprinklers, extinguishers, aisles, exits and separation distances.
Occupancy permit must match the real use. A unit certified for commercial retail is not certified for racking, forklifts and loading. Change of use needs a new certificate.
Sanitary permit for the premises. Cold storage and food-grade warehouses draw an additional health inspection and stricter housekeeping standards.
Environmental clearances for production. Plants may need an ECC from the DENR, plus wastewater or air permits, and a pollution control officer depending on scale.
Renew every January. Same calendar as every other location you hold, with the same 20 January deadline in most LGUs.

Situs of tax

A warehouse is not a situs. A factory is.

No sales are recorded at a pure storage address, so no gross receipts are allocated to that city. But if the address is a factory or plant, 70% of the sales recorded at your principal office becomes taxable where the factory stands — and only 30% stays at head office.

See the full rules →

Three mistakes that cost real money

Renting a bodega in the wrong zone

Cheap warehouse space is often cheap because it sits in a residential or purely commercial zone. The permit will not be issued.

Selling from the warehouse “just once”

That single transaction makes the address an unregistered branch, issuing an undocumented sale, in a city that never taxed it.

Moving stock with no paperwork

Goods that leave head office and appear at the warehouse with no transfer document look, on audit, exactly like unrecorded sales.

Send us the address before you sign the lease

We check the zoning and the fire requirements for what you intend to store, then register the facility with the city and the BIR.

Check an address

Zoning ordinances, fire requirements and local tax schedules differ by city and municipality. Confirm current requirements with us before you commit to a site.

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