The Real Reason Why Singapore Refuses To Implement Wealth Tax

During the Bloomberg Economy Forum in November last year, PM Lee shared that Wealth Tax is “not so easy to implement.” Is this really why they don’t do it? Or are there other reasons they just don’t want to say to us?

“I think it’s an element in a comprehensive revenue system… You tax consumption, you tax income, you tax savings. And you should tax wealth, whether wealth in the form of property, ideally wealth in other forms… However, finding effective ways to tax other forms of wealth is not so easy to implement.”

PM Lee Hsien Loong

What does he mean by not so easy to implement?

WP already came up with a few alternative proposals for him. Singapore could implement progressive tax even for housing, make the landed properties more expensive. We can also increase corporate tax.

Yet it seems like they just don’t want to hurt their fellow rich friends. Are they trying to say that GST was a lot easier for them to decide? So they want to increase GST which affects every Singaporean, especially the poor.

Even if they said they will give GST vouchers to the poor, we know that the vouchers are temporary. What’s worse is that the middle income are left behind. Moreover, a GST hike is permanent.

The rich people won’t leave just because of wealth tax.

Previously, Lawrence Wong boasted that Singapore’s low taxes and stability have attracted the wealthiest people in the world. See, low taxes are not the only reason that they are here. They are also here because Singapore is stable, more stable than many other economies out there.

Of course, the fact that PM Lee doesn’t have a succession plan is already planting doubts about our stability. Is this why they try to still keep wealth tax low, because we are no longer as stable as we were before?

Regardless of what their reason is, why are they hiding it from Singaporeans? Why do they give us a cheap explanation saying that wealth tax is difficult to implement? Where is the transparency that they said they are?