Bill to amend Goods and Services Tax Act tabled for first reading
27 October 2021
On 4 October 2021, the Goods and Services Tax (Amendment) Bill (“Bill”) was tabled for first reading. The Bill has taken into account the feedback received during the Ministry of Finance’s (“MOF”) public consultation on a draft version of the Bill from 6 to 27 July 2021.
This Bill seeks to amend the Goods and Services Tax Act primarily to:
- introduce goods and services tax (“GST”) on low-value goods which are imported via air or post. This will be effected by extending the scope of the existing Overseas Vendor Registration and Reverse Charge regimes.
- introduce GST on business-to-consumer (“B2C”) imported non-digital services. This will be effected by extending the scope of the existing Overseas Vendor Registration regime. With this extension of the regime, all B2C supplies of imported services, whether digital or non-digital, will be brought to tax, if the services can be supplied and received remotely (remote services).
These changes are expected to take effect from 1 January 2023.
To assist taxpayers with the upcoming changes, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (“IRAS”) released the following e-Tax Guides on 30 July 2021:
- GST: Taxing imported low-value goods by way of the overseas vendor registration regime
- GST: Taxing imported remote services by way of the overseas vendor registration regime
The Bill also seeks to update the GST treatment for a supply of media sales by updating the basis for determining whether zero-rating applies to a supply of media sales by having it based on the place where the customer and direct beneficiary of the service belong.
MOF issued a summary of its response to the feedback received from the public consultation on 1 October 2021.
Reference materials
The following materials are available on the Parliament website www.parliament.gov.sg and MOF website www.mof.gov.sg: