Two things cannot escape in life. Death and Taxes. How do we compare with other countries in taxes ? Since i do not have more in-depth knowledge of most, I will do a rough estimate between Taiwan and Singapore.
Taiwan has a model kind of similar to some western countries in concept. In Taiwan, the medical and other benefits portion are funded separately and not part of the annual income tax. Nevertheless employees paid for it as part of the deductible in their salary. For simplification we will exclude them. Similarly we will not include Employer CPF contribution and relief in Singapore situation, and deductibles due to education and dependents in both countries.
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| Tax in Singapore Dollars at 1:22 rate |
As you can see the tax in Taiwan is not competitive at all based on Income Tax formula.
People in $200K bracket, Singapore residents paid about 50% of what Taiwan residents would have to. No wonder the rich migrates to Singapore.
But do we treat our poor badly ? From the above table, Singapore residents earning in S$40K bracket is only paying 17.5% of what a Taiwan residents would have paid.
This is a simplification. Are we far from reality and is this Hard Truth ?
Cory
20170516
A more meaningful comparison will be what a median income earner in each country will pay in total taxes, and the total benefits available in return.
ReplyDeleteOf course rich people will naturally want to live in a low-tax jurisdiction but only if their low taxes can still secure them a high level of property rights, human rights (which is a subset of property rights), transparent legal processes, and a legal code & enforcement of same in manner more or less similar to major western countries.
There's a reason why many billionaires don't choose to move into UAE or Brunei even though these places have zero income taxes.
I do a quick check on Taiwan median income which is about S$1857.
Deletehttp://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan-business/2016/11/08/483326/median-wage.htm
Using 14 months annual income to compute will be roughly S$26K. But is a bad problem to have I feel. $26K is lower to Singapore median which likely doubled what they have. We are paying much lower tax and drawing much higher pay ?