Singapore Budget 2018: Everything you need to know

Last Monday afternoon, the 2018 Singapore Budget was rolled out. I'm sure some of the announcements caught some of you by surprise, some good, some maybe not so good. 

Here's some of the areas that stood out for us here at Wolters Kluwer:

• The GST increase is happening, just not as quickly as we thought, with an increase of 2% expected to be implemented between 2021 and 2025, giving time for all to prepare.

• GST will be implemented on imported digital services from 2020, affecting B2B (via a reverse charge mechanism) and B2C (through an overseas vendor registration model) businesses. 

• After alluding to the carbon tax in the 2017 Budget, it has now been introduced for 2019 onwards, at a rate of $5 per 25,000 tonnes or more of emissions, encouraging companies to be more energy efficient.

• The extension of the Wage Credit Scheme is good news for companies, especially SMEs in helping to retain their valuable manpower

• While the Productivity, Innovation and scheme will soon meet its end, this year's introduction of the Productivity Solutions Grant coupled with last year's SMEs Go Digital Programme will be of strong value for SMEs to innovate and transform

• The Corporate Income Tax rebate has been extended to YA2019, at a rate of 20%, subject to a $10,000 cap, while the rate for YA2018 has been increased to 40%, capped at $15,000.

Want to know more? For an overview of everything you need to know, why not download our Singapore Budget Executive Summary 2018? Written by Sivakumar Saravanan, Executive Tax Director from Crowe Horwath, it gives you an excellent summary of the impact of Budget 2018.

Download the Summary now!