Two things in life are certain: death and taxes. (c) benny franklin
April 15th is fast approaching, which means it’s time to fork over some dough to Uncle Sam. It also means it’s time to fork it over to Uncle…Tan? I find the Beatles always make this time of year more bearable.
I looked up the Singaporean income tax structure this morning, and was shocked to discovered that after credits and tax rebates, my total tax rate works out to be less than 5%.
That’s insane! And as a single person, my US taxes would have been somewhere around 25%. Crazy! If I were living in France: approximately 30%. And probably close to 50% in Scandinavia.
I spend more than that on gasoline in a year in the US. I spend more than that on a plane ticket home. I spend more than that on restaurants in a year.
I’m living in one of the wealthiest nations (per capita) in the world, and paying less than 5%? Hmm…maybe best not to ask questions.
Well, who needs the Beatles now? Laissez-faire baby, and long live free market economies!
[Disclaimer: my SG health insurance sucks].
Suddenly in Asia 
4 comments
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March 30, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Suhas
Yeah, the tax is less here.. Correspondingly, even the salaries are comparatively less, right ? :-)
April 12, 2011 at 5:32 pm
kierstens
I guess that depends on the individual! For locals I’d imagine it’s quite different, as they also have to pay into their CPFs. As an foreigner on an EP, I don’t pay any of that.
March 30, 2011 at 5:10 pm
kirsten
I don’t even have to pay tax this year because I earned less than $22k. But I still pay GST (that seems to keep going up), ERP (when I cab), etc. etc.
I think I would be willing to pay more tax if it meant that the poor and needy had more social welfare. But then again, some experts have pointed out that we have so much money in the reserves that we don’t even necessarily need to raise taxes to develop more social welfare programmes.
April 12, 2011 at 5:33 pm
kierstens
I have no idea how the public funding here works. All I know, is my jaw hit the floor when I saw how much (or how little) I was being asked to contribute!!