Around $387m in late and overdue taxes recovered in FY14: IRAS

There were over 15,000 non-compliant taxpayers.

Though majority of Singaporeans are compliant taxpayers, there remain individuals and firms who try to flaunt tax rules. The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) today revealed that it has uncovered a total of 15,233 non-compliant cases and recovered about S$387 million in taxes and penalties in FY2013/14.

This is in spite of the fact that tax arrears fell to a record low of 0.77% of the total net tax assessed for Financial Year 2013/14, while on-time tax return filing rates have improved across all tax types. 

In its latest Annual Report for Financial Year (FY) 2013/14, IRAS showed that on-time tax filing improved from 94% to 95.6% for individuals, and 80.9% to 82.5% for companies. 

More GST-registered businesses also filed their tax returns on time, with a high on-time filing rate of 93.9%.
According to Commissioner of Inland Revenue Tan Kim Siew, “While we actively promote voluntary compliance, we continue to deter non-compliance and establish a strong presence. By balancing tough measures to recover outstanding taxes with softer methods to encourage voluntary compliance, we help the majority of taxpayers in Singapore pay their fair share of taxes. Through these measures, we seek to maintain the public’s trust in IRAS as a strong and fair tax authority.”

Here’s more from IRAS: 

IRAS’ continual efforts to make things simple and convenient for taxpayers have helped raise the voluntary compliance level of Singapore’s taxpayers. IRAS expanded the No-Filing Service (NFS) to 1.23 million taxpayers, including 15,000 first-time taxpayers, for the 2014 tax filing season.

The mobile-friendly version of myTax.iras.gov.sg enabled users of mobile devices to use selected e-Services without having to download any application.

Businesses that choose to switch to e-Filing the Simplified Form C (Form C-S) via myTax.iras.gov.sg are now less prone to errors when filing their tax returns, as they will be prompted to correct certain mistakes in their tax returns before submitting them to IRAS.

To further simplify tax matters for small businesses, eligible small businesses will no longer need to keep physical invoices and receipts with effect from Year of Assessment 2015.