Singapore wrongly charged taxpayers US$5.5 million in GST last 5 years, will now have to refund fees

They are the Council for Estate Agencies, Housing and Development Board (HDB), the Land Transport Authority (LTA), the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) under the Ministry of Social and Family Development, the Singapore Food Agency and the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

An internal review by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) found that 18 fees – applying to both individuals and businesses – across the six agencies were affected.

This translates to some 200,000 transactions annually that were wrongly charged with GST since January 1, 2019, said MOF in a statement on Wednesday.

Around 90 per cent of these transactions were with individuals, the rest with businesses, and HDB fees account for more than 70 per cent of the transactions.

“MOF and the six agencies apologise for the erroneous charging of GST. All agencies have taken immediate steps to cease the charging of GST on the affected fees from today,” said MOF’s second permanent secretary for finance Lai Wei Lin.

“The Government will refund affected taxpayers the GST charged for the fees, and we will make the refund process as seamless as possible.”

The erroneous charges would have been applied even before the past five years.

But MOF said GST-registered entities are required by law to keep records for up to five years.

Hence, the affected agencies will have a record of the taxpayers who had made transactions in the last five years, but beyond that, they will make proactive refunds where records are available.

All six agencies will also stop charging GST on the 18 fees from Wednesday, the ministry added.

MOF noted that there are GST-registered businesses that may have been wrongly charged GST on certain fees, but they would also have claimed the GST they paid out as input tax during