Singapore to toughen penalties for GST act offences

It wants to broaden IRAS’ powers when cracking down serious GST-related crimes.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) opened feedback to a set of proposals it has made for the amendment of Singapore’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) act before its introduction to imported services.

According to an announcement, the GST on imported services will take effect through a reverse charge mechanism for business-to-business (B2B) imported services, where the local GST-registered business customer must account and pay GST to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) directly, on the services that it imports.

The tax will also take effect through an Overseas Vendor Registration (OVR) mode for business-to-consumer (B2C) imported services.

There are five other proposed amendments to the existing tax policies. Firstly, MOF said that the bill should enhance IRAS’ ability to investigate tax crimes by including the powers of forced entry, arrest without warrant, and body searches.

The second amendment proposes that IRAS should be allowed to share with law enforcement agencies (LEA) information that it considers critical for investigation or prosecution of serious crimes. Serious crimes include offences covered by First and Second Schedules of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking, and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act

The third amendment aims to reform the penalty for a non-GST registered person issuing an invoice or receipt with an amount purported to be GST. It proposes the use of alternative evidence, aside from invoices, to prove illegal tax collection; a custodial sentence where the offence is committed without reasonable excuse or through negligence; and a new offence for a GST-registered business that collects more tax than allowed.

MOF also proposed to extend customer accounting to government transactions. “This will help ease business compliance as GST-registered suppliers will not need to differentiate their transactions with the Government and with GST-registered customers,” it said.

Finally, it also proposed to allow the disposal of documents or things seized under the GST Act if the owner of the seized items fails to collect the items upon the end of the investigation.

Currently, the detailed consultation documents for the draft GST (Amendment) Bill 2018 can be accessed on the Ministry of Finance's website and the REACH consultation portal.

You're the reader we write for. You're also the person our partners want to reach.

If that sentence describes you — a founder, a C-suite, someone whose attention companies pay good money for — then you already understand why SBR works. We've spent twenty years earning the trust of readers exactly like you. Which is exactly what makes this an interesting place for your company to show up, too.

The ways it can show up are broader than most people assume — thought leadership articles, sponsored content, industry summits across Southeast Asia, regional awards programmes, podcasts, and media placements in print and digital. The right fit depends on what you're trying to do, which is why we'd rather start with a conversation than send a rate card.

If your company has something this audience should know about, we'd like to hear what you're working on.

No rate cards until we understand the brief. It's a better use of everyone's time.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia

Top News

30 One-Sentence Stories From People Who Have Built Better Habits

None of these stories are mine. They were sent to me by readers of Atomic Habits. My hope is that these examples will illustrate how real people are putting the book into practice. They will show you what people are actually doing to build good habits and break bad ones. And hopefully, they will spark some ideas for how you can do the same.

news conversion

SBR 5 Lorem Ipsum News 2 [8 May]

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

SBR 4 Lorem Ipsum [8 May Top Stories]