Singapore Launches Property Tax Consultation

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

15 June 2010

Singapore’s Ministry of Finance is conducting a public consultation on amendments to the country’s property tax system which aim to improve tax administration or provide clarity for taxpayers.

The draft Property Tax (Amendment) Bill 2010 provides for legislation on a total of twelve changes. The proposed changes, which have arisen from a periodic review of the property tax system, include the streamlining of reporting requirements for property owners. The requirement for property owners to inform the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore of certain events (such as when a building is completed, rebuilt, enlarged, altered or improved) will be abolished.

In addition, the time bar for the Comptroller of Property Tax to recover outstanding property tax, and refund excess property tax paid by taxpayers, will be aligned at five years with the similar time bar which applies to income tax and goods and services tax; and it will also be clarified that the interest payable on the refund of excess property tax pursuant to a court order is to be computed from the date of the order.

With regard to the latter, the Property Tax Act is currently silent on how interest should be computed for tax refunds after the tax appeal has been heard by the Valuation Review Board or higher courts. The amendment seeks to specify that the computation of interest for property tax appeal cases will be from the date of the court order, as is the case for income tax cases.

The changes would also allow the Chief Assessor and Comptroller of Property Tax to cancel erroneous property tax notices from previous years and replace them with amended notices, for instance where errors arose from clerical/arithmetical mistakes or from incorrect information provided by taxpayers.

Furthermore, it will be confirmed that the Comptroller should be able to recover property tax on land on which demolition has taken place from the date of completion of demolition works; and be allowed to recover property tax due on redevelopment sites retrospectively. This is also subject to a time bar limit of five years.

The consultation exercise will run until June 25, 2010.

Recommended