|
1. The Ministry of Finance is seeking
comments on the draft
Income Tax (Amendment) Bill 2008 which sets out
the legislative amendments to the Income Tax Act. We
invite you to contribute comments on the amendments.
Your views are important as they would help improve
the draft legislation.
2. The draft Income Tax (Amendment)
Bill 2008 incorporates amendments to the Income Tax
Act relating to the following tax changes:
- Budget 2008 tax changes. These are the tax
changes announced by Minister for Finance Tharman
Shanmugaratnam in the 2008
Budget Statement. Some of the key changes include:
| - |
Tax incentives to encourage more
pervasive R&D |
| - |
Enhancements to the course fee
relief for individuals to encourage continual
upgrading |
| - |
Incentive to grant tax deduction
for expenditure on fixtures & fitting to
provide relief for businesses on the costs they
incur on upgrading of business premises |
| |
|
- Other tax changes. These are changes or
refinements to existing tax policies and administration
resulting from on-going reviews of the income tax
system. Some examples include:
| - |
The “No Filing System”
|
| - |
Allowing the “Last-in-First-out”
(LIFO) method to be used to compute the cost
of treasury shares for tax deduction |
| - |
Changes to allow partnerships
to be eligible for specified tax incentives |
| - |
Double tax deduction (DTD)scheme
for donations made to qualifying grantmaking
philanthropic organisations
|
3. The summary
table lists all the tax changes and explains the
amendments to the Income Tax Act.
4. The aim of this exercise is to obtain feedback on
areas of the draft legislation that could be improved
in terms of clarity or compliance by taxpayers. For
the Budget 2008 tax changes, we are primarily seeking
feedback on the drafting of the legislation as the policies
have been adopted after feedback and extensive debate
in Parliament. For non-Budget 2008 tax changes, we welcome
comments on both the policy and drafting aspects of
the proposed legislative amendments.
5. We hope to obtain feedback on the
draft Income Tax (Amendment) Bill 2008. We seek your
full support to ensure that the consultation exercise
is productive and focused. Respondents are requested
to follow these guidelines:
- Please identify yourself as well as the organisation
you represent (if any) so that we may follow up
to clarify any issues, if necessary.
- Make your comments clear and concise.
- Please use the prescribed
template provided to help us understand your
feedback better.
- Your comments should focus on how the legislative
amendments can be better written to make them clearer
and to make compliance easier.
- Please explain your points with illustrations,
examples, data or alternative formulations of the
amendments as far as possible.
6. This draft legislation is released only for the
purpose of consultation and should therefore not be
used for individual or business decisions as it does
not represent the final legislation or regulations.
All comments received during the consultation exercise
will be reviewed thoroughly and, if accepted, will be
incorporated in the Bill for introduction in Parliament.
7. The draft Income Tax (Amendment)
Bill 2008 is available for public consultation from
27 June to 28 July 2008. Comments received by
the Ministry after 28 July 2008 will not be considered
as they will be too late for incorporation into the
final Bill.
8. Please send us your comments, using the prescribed
template, by:
| a) email to pc_itabill@mof.gov.sg;
or |
| b) fax to 6337 4134;
or |
| c) post to: |
Ministry of Finance
100 High Street, #10-01
The Treasury
Singapore 179434.
|
Alternatively, you might wish to provide
your comments using the online
questionnaire. We encourage comments through the
online questionnaire or by email as they will reach
us faster and speed up the process of consideration.
9. We will publish on the Ministry
of Finance website a summary of the main comments we
receive together with our responses by September
2008. The summary will not disclose the identity
of respondents, and will not separately address or acknowledge
every comment received.
10. For your convenience, the relevant
documents relating to this public consultation exercise
can be downloaded for further reference. Please click
here.
|
