More millionaires in Singapore

The number of tax payers with an annual income of more than a million dollars have increased to 2,121, screamed the headlines in the major newspapers recently.

Yes, these people made a million bucks in just one year. Most of us take a lifetime, or longer.

Out of these 2,121 high earners, “only” 31 were non-residents. The rest were Singapore residents. I wonder how many were actually Singapore citizens.

Nevertheless, these wealthy individuals were taxed relatively heavily. (Use my tax calculator to see that if one had $1,000,000 as chargeable income, the effective tax rate is 17.87%, while another person with $50,000 chargeable income pays only 3.50%.)

Altogether, these rich individuals paid a combined $682 million in taxes, which is 14.5% of all personal taxes collected by IRAS. Yet they form only a small 0.276% of all the 769,599 individuals who paid taxes. Fair enough, I heard you say.

Out of the $22.86 billion in total collected taxes, $4.7 billion came from personal income taxes, forming the 2nd largest slice of the pie. The largest slice came from corporate taxes – paid by companies and businesses – at $8.48 billion. The remaining: $3.98 billion from GST, $2.01 billion from property taxes, $2.02 billion from stamp duties, $1.28 billion from betting and sweepstake duties, and the rest from private lotteries duties and estate duties.

See the IRAS report for more information.