Singapore’s Goods and Service Tax is “not high”, according to Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, when compared with member countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
This, even after a planned 2 percentage point increase.
Said Mr Heng during his Budget speech today:
“Our GST is not high by international standards even the planned increase to 9%. The OECD average is 19% and most APAC countries exceed 9%.”
The 36 OECD member nations include the likes of Australia, Japan, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France and Finland.
Canada: 5%
Japan: 10% (from Oct 2019)
Australia: 10%
Germany: 19%
France: 20%
Finland: 24%
Denmark: 25%
The GST increase to 9 percent, announced in Budget 2018, is slated to take place anytime between 2021 and 2025.
Then, Mr Heng said that the exact timing of when the GST increase will kick in will depend on the “state of the economy, how much our expenditures grow and how buoyant our existing taxes are.”
f0000001u cheung kong
February 19, 2019 at 12:34 pm
TAKE THAT, SINKEVERPOORER
Hongkong, that other oft-compared-to trade-dependent entrepôt & Asia’s bastion of freewheeling capitalism, has, to this day, a ZERO rate of GST, VAT, or whatever sales-related tax.
It has never imposed them nor proposed nor enacted laws to impose them, much less depended on them. Nor indeed EVER saw the need to (to depend on them, to impose/foist them on its residents the way this SmartNation whose coffers teem & overflow with reserves does on its hapless lowly citizenry).
Not now, not anytime soon, not likely in the forseeable future and probably not ever.
Take that, yew stinking pool of papayas!