Singapore Tax Academy To Enhance Standards Among Tax Professionals

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com Hong Kong

02 August 2006

A new Tax Academy has launched in Singapore to raise professional standards and levels of expertise in the local tax community in a collaborative effort between the government and private tax practitioners.

The Tax Academy was launched last week by Tharman Shanmugaratam, Singapore's Minister for Education and Second Minister for Finance, at the opening of a conference on transfer pricing.

The Academy is backed by the 'big four' accounting firms, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Law Society of Singapore and the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS).

Shanmugaratam stated that the goal of the Academy is to bring together local and international tax practitioners, tax administrators, researchers and academia to engage in education and knowledge development. It will provide a range of training and professional development programmes, and will serve as a forum for tax practitioners to exchange ideas and interact.

The Academy plans to commence courses in income tax at the end of August.

"This is a major step to raise professional competencies and expertise in our tax community. It will also grow Singapore's role as a knowledge hub in tax policy and tax administration," Shanmugaratam observed.

"To serve as a knowledge hub in this field, we need highly skilled tax professionals, top quality research and the presence of international tax institutions. It means enlarging our pool of tax professionals and helping them acquire the complex expertise that is required to function effectively, not only in the Singapore environment but in fast changing international markets," he noted.

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