Purpose: Precious stones and metals have commonly been used throughout the world as a conduit for terrorism and money laundering activities. Such illicit use of these assets has called for its much-needed attention from a regulatory perspective. This is particularly relevant in a financial...

In 2018, two articles in The Straits Times described how some professionals were incorporating one or more companies in an attempt to gain tax advantages. The issue was the difference between the highest personal income tax rate of 22 per cent and the corporate tax rate of 17 per cent, which...

As explained by the Minister for Education and Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam in the Second Reading speech in Parliament on the Business Trusts Bill, business trusts are distinct from both companies and traditional trusts. Like a company, a...

With the rapid development of the digital economy and the increasing importance of GST as a source of tax revenue, the Singapore Government has proposed several reforms to tighten the collection of tax revenue and tap its tax base more efficiently. The reforms focus on activating the currently...

Rapid developments in automation technology pose a risk of mass displacement of human labour, resulting in the need to support and retrain displaced workers (a negative externality). We propose an “automation tax” that would slow the adoption of automation technology in appropriate...

Tax considerations play a major role in the decisions of fund managers of where to base their funds. The highly mobile nature of capital has resulted in tax competition, leading to several host jurisdictions for funds in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Labuan, and the BVI) having very similar tax...

Singapore imposes a single tax on income. Capital gains are not taxable. Income tax was first sought to be introduced in Singapore more as a war tax in 1917 and has had a chequered history of introduction, application and repeal from 1917 till 1941, including a period from 1923 till 1940 without...

In recent years, the increasing prevalence of ultra-high net-worth individuals (“UNWIs”) in Asia has placed the actions and choices of this new class of financial elites and their affairs in the spotlight. In this paper, we consider the common structures used in Family Offices and Private...

Academic discussion of justice and taxation has focused on determining the moral limits of taxation. This article is concerned specifically with the moral limits on the redistributivity of taxation. Rawlsian principles enable us to determine the moral upper and lower bounds of redistribution...

A ‘Contracting Problem' arises when software is used to autonomously enter into contracts without human input. Questions arise as to how and whether there can be an expression of an objective intention to be legally bound. This article considers three leading solutions to the Contracting...