I read the other day that our honourable finance minister highlighted in Parliament that in the overall, Singaporeans pay one of the lowest taxes in world, in fact about two-thirds of what a US citizen pay.
I did not do further research on this topic but such a remark strike me as instinctively incorrect. There are always two sides to the same coin. Typically, in countries that mandate that its citizens pay for higher taxes, the governments are also obliged under the law to provide a comprehensive social security net encompassing healthcare, unemployment and retirement pensions for the majority of its citizens. Hence,in the US, social security spending together with medicare and mediaid take up a substantial portion of the country budget spending.
On the contrary, the government over here does very little in the area of providing a social security net for its citizens as there is always this constant BIG fear that in doing so, even in a gesture move, will signal the road down a slipper path of no return.
Hence, if it will to be true that Singaporeans have to pay about two-thirds of the taxes compared to someone in US for a similar income level, then I would think our system of taxation has indeed gone awry.
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