
It is the tax season again! Because the measures of Budget 2018 aren’t going to pay for themselves. To help you do your civic duty, DollarsAndSense.sg has put together this guide to help you through the process as painlessly as possible.
If you find this guide useful, do share it with people whom you think will benefit.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
Read Also: Guide To Understanding Taxes In Singapore, And Who Pays For Them
# 1 Do I Need To File?
Filing your income tax returns is the annual ritual of formally declaring various forms of income and deductibles to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS). Your tax bill for the year is derived from your tax returns.
If you received a notice (via letter or SMS) informing you to file your income tax: You need to file your income taxes.
If you received a No-Filing Service notice (via letter/SMS): Congratulations, your tax returns have been filed automatically. You don’t have to file this year, unless you have additional income to declare or wish to claim additional reliefs or deductions. Otherwise, you can await your tax bill from IRAS and pay accordingly when it comes.
If your employer participates in the Auto-Inclusion Scheme (AIS): Fields in your tax returns regarding your salary will be pre-filled, but you will still need to complete the remainder of your tax return form.
If you didn’t receive anything from IRAS: You will need to file income tax returns if your total personal income (including salaries and rental income) in the current year of assessment (1 January to 31 December 2017) is more than $22,000 or if your net business income derived from Singapore is more than $6,000.
# 2 When Do I Need To File?
For the year of assessment of 2018, the deadline for filing are as follows:
15 April 2018 (for paper filing)
18 April 2018 (for e-filing)
Don’t procrastinate. Late filing (or non-filing) carry penalties that range from increased tax dues to a court summon and even an arrest order.
# 3 What Do I Need To Prepare Before Filing?
– Ensure you can access your SingPass, including two-factor authentication (2FA). You will need it to access myTaxPortal.
– If you are a salaried employee of a company that isn’t under the AIS, you would have received a IR8A form from your employer.
– Records for declaring taxable income.
– Records for filing tax deductions and reliefs.
# 4 Filing Your Income Tax In 3 Simple Steps
Step 1: Login to myTaxPortal
Using your SingPass, login to myTaxPortal. Once you’re in, click on the Individuals tab, followed by View Filing Status. Based on your situation outlined in # 1, you can see what your next actions should be.
Even if you are under the No-Filing Service, you should still view your returns and check for any omissions or errors. We highly recommend you do so, because there might be some deductions and reliefs you are eligible for and you might not even realise it.
Step 2: File/Check Your Returns (Form B/B1)
Click on the Individuals tab and then the File Individual Income Tax Form B/B1. Here is where you need to declare assessable income earned for the year 2017, as well as deductions and reliefs you wish to claim.
Assessable Income:
Assessable income refers to the total income you earn after the deduction of allowable expenses and approved donations. For most of us, our assessable income would comprise mainly of the salary received from our job. It can also include the income received from part-time or freelance jobs, or rental income from properties.
Not all income earned in Singapore are considered assessable income. For example, earnings from lottery are not taxable. Neither are capital gains made from stocks or property investments.
The table below is a non-exhaustive list of what are the taxable and non-taxable items.
You can click on these links to find out more about what each item under “Other Income” mean: 1) Dividends 2) Interest 3) Rent from Property 4) Royalty 5) Charge 6) Estate/Trust Income 7) Gains or Profits of an Income Nature.
Chargeable Income:
Chargeable income refers to the total amount that you would be taxed after deducting personal reliefs from your assessable income. As your chargeable income increases, you can expect your income tax payable as a percentage of your total income to increase.
In other words: Assessable Income – Deductions & Reliefs = Chargeable Income
Your chargeable income determines your tax bill, which increases in percentage as you move up the income bracket.
Source: IRAS
After you are done with the income section, look through the list of deductions and reliefs carefully so that you do not miss out on any ‘discounts’ on tax you are entitled to. You can refer to this article about some of the common reliefs you can claim for.
Step 3: Make your declaration and save a copy of the acknowledgement
Once you declared that all information you provided in the tax return form is correct to the best of your knowledge, you’re done! You should see an Acknowledgement Page. Save or print it for your records.
As a kiasu Singaporean, you can double check that IRAS has received your tax returns by clicking on the Individuals tab again and then View Filing Status.
# 5 What’s Next?
You’re done with filing your taxes for 2017! Give yourself a pat on the back.
All that’s left is to await your Notice of Assessment (NOA) from IRAS, which is your tax bill. You will receive your NOA between April to September 2018, which is a wider window than a newborn’s estimated delivery window. And just like receiving a newborn, you should already anticipate how much your taxes will cost you and start saving for it.
As soon as you receive your NOA, check it carefully and if there are any discrepancies, you should file an objection with IRAS within 30 days from the date on your NOA.
If everything is in order, you can pay your tax bill for 2017 by a variety of methods, including:
– One-time or 12-month interest-free GIRO deductions
– Credit cards
– Internet banking bill payment/fund transfer
– AXS, SAM, ATM (DBS/POSB or OCBC only) machines
– NETS at any Singapore Post branch
While not all credit cards can be used for income tax payments, those that you can use typically exclude tax payments from earning you card rewards such as cashback, miles or points. However, by using a tool like CardUp to make payment, you can get to enjoy cashback, miles or points on every dollar made to the tax authorities. CardUp allows any credit card to be used for your tax payments conveniently online, without the need to do so at AXS machines.
That’s it. Thank you for contributing to Singapore’s continued development.
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