Summary of Responses to the Public Consultation on the draft GST (Amendment) Bill 2022

1. The Ministry of Finance (MOF) invited the public to provide feedback on the draft GST (Amendment) Bill 2022 (“GST Bill”) from 13 June to 4 July 2022[1]. The draft GST Bill proposes amendments to give legislative effect to two GST measures which were announced in the 2022 Budget Statement on 18 February 2022. The draft GST Bill also proposes three other changes arising from the periodic review of the GST regime.

2. The feedback received pertained to the following tax changes:

• Clarifying how the Transitional Rules in the GST Act are to operate; 

• Refining the rules for taxing Low Value Goods (LVG)[2] and imported services by way of the Reverse Charge (RC)[3] and Overseas Vendor Registration (OVR)[4] regimes; and

• Effecting the GST rate change from 7% to 8% from 1 January 2023, and from 8% to 9% from 1 January 2024;

Our responses to the key feedback are in Annex A.

3. The proposed legislative changes will be incorporated into the GST Bill to be presented to Parliament in the last quarter of 2022. MOF thanks all individuals and organisations who have taken the time and effort to provide their input.

Issued by:
Ministry of Finance
Singapore
10 October 2022 

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[1] Please refer to the press release issued on 13 June 2022 for the public consultation documents on the draft Goods and Services Tax (Amendment) Bill 2022.
[2] Low Value Goods are goods valued up to $400 that are imported via air or post.
[3] Under the existing RC regime, GST-registered recipients of imported services who cannot claim input GST on their purchases in full are required to perform reverse charge (i.e. charge themselves GST on their purchases) to account for GST to IRAS on their purchase of imported services. This will be extended to include imported LVG from 1 Jan 2023.
[4] Under the existing OVR regime, overseas suppliers and electronic marketplace operators which make significant sales of digital services to local customers are required to collect GST on such B2C sales of digital services and pay the GST to IRAS. This will be extended to include B2C imported LVG and imported non-digital services from 1 Jan 2023.