Are you ready for 7 million people on tiny Singapore?
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So, could you please tell us:
1) How many families are better off with GST implementation and top-tier income tax reduction from 25% to 20%? The way you say is like only a minority is worse off while the majority is better off? I doubt so, and I have shown that majority is worse off. May be you want to show your figure to prove what you are trying to argue?
2) If tax revenue is not enough that is why GST has been implemented so that income tax need not be raised as you mentioned, why there is a need to reduce top-tier income tax from 25% to 20%? So that GST needs to be raised further? So tell us, who and how many people benefits the most from these 2 changes?
There are people who argue for the sake of arguing just to try to prove that they are always right (when they are in fact wrong) to the extend of taking people's words out of context and rephrasing part of other people's writing and try to interpret in another distorted way to support his argument and against the other's argument.3Boys:
For the record. Not that'll change anything....
One should note, there is agreement even in this fractious forum, that the lowest quintile of families get back more in rebates than what they pay in GSTs. That being the case, it is inevitable that as you head up the ladder, some families will flip from a positive balance to a negative balance. It's plain mathematics. Are some families worse off in this current construct than say, before 2005? I am sure there are. They question is, how many, and by how much. My back of the envelope calculation of the 60k income family, is that given the worse case, where they did not benefit from an income tax reduction, was that they may be worse off by $95 a month. Yes, there is also consideration about retirement, but if one has built up a CPF nest egg (accumulated tax free), then one should not be completely destitute. Further, it was already stated when a consumption tax was promulgated, that part of the reason is that we may have a shrinking workforce and we need to expand taxation beyond just working adults. Yes, that's you, Mr Retiree, Mrs SAHM, Ms Uni student. There is no magic about it, GST types taxes are used worldwide precisely to avoid overtaxing only income earners.
Yeah, there are many many little populist things you can do, exempt basic goods, exempt medical, blah blah. Every single one creates another loophole and another layer of bureaucracy, which then causes leakage and sucks up costs to administer, instead of saving those dollars and giving them back to the needy. It's not just the taxes that need to be kept lean, the administration of taxes should also be lean. People ignore this concept. Further, if you lose tax revenue on such items, and have a shortfall in revenue, then what do you do? Raise taxes on other items? Extend the reach of income tax into the middle class? Everybody likes to propose airy fairy ideas but no one considers the trade offs.
If taxes are raised, do people expect to come out behind? Well, generally, that is the intent! Raising taxes is a way for the government to raise revenue from its people. If everyone expects to get back more in rebates than they pay in raised taxes, what's the point of raising taxes in the first place? It should not be the expectation that one immediately gets back in rebates enough to completely offset the GST increase. People who argue so are standing its argument on its head.
You know about the only certainty in life being death and taxes.....
The only other certainty I feel right now is that I am going to regret even posting this.........3Boys:
Since neither you or I are a tax expert or a Nobel Laureate economist, then I suggest one be circumspect about one's expertise in the field. I detect a distinct lack of circumspection since you deem yourself to be superior in intellect and motivation to our ministers, and feel qualified to instruct our ministers in constructing a tax code.JannettLee:
The way you are telling us is that those people paid Millions of $ of salary to implement policies did not look at it from all sides of the picture because they are just unable to articulate and convince all of us why there is a need to implement GST and yet reduce income tax from 25% to 20%. Most of us can only see that what they are doing only benefits the few % of the really rich. Worst still, there are still a minority that don't even know about this fact and can argue that GST implementation and cutting top-tier income tax benefits the majority of Singaporeans! What a pitiful soul... They are living in their own world or what? :slapshead:
I did not say the GST benefits the majority of Singaporeans directly. From time to time, governments change or modify their tax rates to keep the country competitive. And in a competitive economy, we are therefore able to generate high value jobs for Singaporeans. And if government revenues are kept up, they have greater degrees of freedom to disburse help to the most needy. So the payoff is indirect.
Does the tax code benefit the MAJORITY of Singaporeans?
I believe the tax code is crafted to benefit SINGAPORE, and in doing so, benefits SINGAPOREANS in general, either directly or indirectly.
By the way, you will know from reading my other posts, that I support an INCREASE in income taxes (and retaining GST).
Life is not as simple as you make it. -
pirate:
Well said.Often the person who does better is not smarter, quicker or stronger. He/she is just more committed. That applies to defence. It also applies to business, work and school.
We should try to remember that while we navel gaze on what level of economic growth we think is \"enough\", as well as what level of defence spending is \"enough\".
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:rahrah: -
Phew!
I think fair minded people know exactly what's going on.......
Janette/moonsun, be you the same or different people, I have already written my broad themes on GST and defence, with reasonable backing of numbers. I'm not getting drawn into prolonged debate over your nitpicking of details. E.g. Moonsun, your continued tirade on my use of 'regional' is just hilarious and beyond the pale, you had one thought on how that was used and I had a different thought, and you try to use that semantic to undermine the discussion on whether Singapore can stand up to 'regional' forces? I think one can easily see who is the argumentative one here. Janette, you clearly do not read my posts, your last question on GST
, my viewpoint is there already, it's not necessary for the majority to benefit, if by benefit you mean that they should be getting back more in rebates than they pay in taxes. That completely defeats the purpose of raising taxes. One of the objectives in introducing/raising GST was to rebalance the proportion of taxes drawn from income and consumption, this is clearly stated, and in many countries the top income tax rate sand GST rate are fairly comparable, whereas in Singapore it's still tilted in favor of income tax by the ratio of nearly 3:1.
You might want to consider who you are calling argumentative or blinkered. It's worth taking a look in the mirror(s). -
Washington think-tank Centre for Strategic Studies issued a report sometime in Oct/Nov? 2012, that defence spending for China, Japan, India, Taiwan and South Korea doubled in the last decade to 224 billion, with China of course leading the way. So as I have mentioned earlier in another post in another thread, we are now in the Asian century, and it is just at the beginning of the century.
The defence spending of Asian countries will go up for a variety of reasons. I had mentioned not only hostile military action but also terrorism. I however forgot to mention cyber warfare. Many countries military are expanding their electronic warfare capabilities to deal with cyber warfare and it appears that it is the military in the various countries that are tasked with the defence against cyber warfare. Protection of the electronic networks of airports, television and radio stations, power stations, MRT, ports, banks, etc. require the expertise and involvement of the military.
Electronic warfare is also not cheap but many militaries also do not mention it as psychologically do not want to scare citizens in their country. -
It is also an accepted military doctrine that you must not only be deadly but SEEN to be deadly as the Total Defence doctrine includes psychological warfare. The citizens of the small country must feel safe and the citizens of the bigger country must feel that many of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands will die if there is an attack on a smaller country.
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3Boys:
3BoysPhew!
I think fair minded people know exactly what's going on.......
The fact is that it is the ignoramus folks who are making the silliest comments about defence. And they don't even have a rudimentary understanding of Singapore's history, military or otherwise! And to top it off, they are not displaying any capacity for acquiring new knowledge. How do you explain colour to a person who refuses to open his eyes?
P.S. For folks who are not acquainted with military lingo, you may wish to read this wiki for the definition of power projection as mentioned by 3Boys. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection -
Irrelevant:
Thanks for the nice link. I am going to try some character building today and refrain from reacting to even the gravest provocation.
3Boys3Boys:
Phew!
I think fair minded people know exactly what's going on.......
The fact is that it is the ignoramus folks who are making the silliest comments about defence. And they don't even have a rudimentary understanding of Singapore's history, military or otherwise! And to top it off, they are not displaying any capacity for acquiring new knowledge. How do you explain colour to a person who refuses to open his eyes?
P.S. For folks who are not acquainted with military lingo, you may wish to read this wiki for the definition of power projection as mentioned by 3Boys. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection
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Mdm Koh:
But how do you know that it is not already the minimum?
So I wonder why we are still spending so much...
I guess none of us here is expert in military to judge on that. -
limlim:
That's why I :siam: far far from this.
But how do you know that it is not already the minimum?Mdm Koh:
So I wonder why we are still spending so much...
I guess none of us here is expert in military to judge on that.
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