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From 2000 to 2005, Looi San Cheng made $1.05 million in profits from his curry puff business.But this star hawker-businessman, who was lauded by PM Lee at last year’s National Day Rally, made a wrong move by evading tax. He under declared his income by more than $1 million over the 6 years.The IRAS ...
You can find in today’s Straits Times a list of the top 5% highest paying jobs. The list, which is based on a Manpower Ministry’s report, is not very different from what I posted in my last year’s top 100 jobs post.Here’s the list (the figures are median monthly gross wages*):Specialised surgeon - $12,750Managing ...
A former classmate told me that most investment bankers have relatively short i-banking careers. In fact, many start their second careers in less lucrative sectors before they hit 35. In …
Civil servants will get a year-end bonus of 1.75 months. See the just-released PSD announcement. This includes 0.75 month for the Annual Variable Component (AVC) and 1 month for the Non-Pensionable Annual Allowance (NPAA). The NPAA is also known as the 13th month payment. This 1.75 months’ bonus is awarded in addition to the mid-year ...
In fact, we are wealthier than both Hong Kong and Switzerland if you look at the “Pockets of Wealth” ranking table published by Business Times. (The BT article in turn based its info on reports from Boston Consulting Group.)To be specific, Singapore has a higher percentage of millionaire households than Hong Kong and Switzerland.It may ...
We all know that we earn 2.5% interest for our CPF ordinary account and 4% for the special and medisave accounts.While flipping through the MAS Annual Report 2006/2007, I noted that in 2006, the interest credited to CPF members’ balances is a total of $3,926.8 million (yes, that’s close to $4 billion). This figure ...
Did you notice from the newspaper reports and MOM data that our latest residential unemployment rate is 3.7%, which in my opinion is significantly higher than the overall unemployment rate at 2.6%?If fact, if you study the MOM data, it has always been higher.Why is this the case?The only reason I can think of ...
As we brace ourselves for an IT job boom, here’s a ZDNet Asia report on IT employment treands in the region.According to the report, the top 5 skills in demand are:Project managementBusiness analysisMicrosoft .NETJ2EE (Java Enterprise Edition)General programming skillNot surprisingly, the top industry is Legal & Finance, with an average annual salary of about ...
Tan Kin Lian wrote an excellent letter on term insurance to the ST, which today had an editorial article on the same topic.If you don’t know him, Tan Kin Lian was the ex-CEO of NTUC Income, one of the largest insurance companies in Singapore. He served 30 years as CEO (!!) and retired in 2007. ...
The government has announced that the employer CPF contribution rate will be increased by 1%.From 1st September this year, your employer will pay an additional 0.5% to your Medisave Account. If you earn more than $4,500, you will get exactly $22.50 more. This is because CPF contributions are calculated based on the cap of $4,500.However, ...
9.2% of resident taxpayers made $100k to $150k for YA2008, up from 7.8% for YA2004. The increase has been gradual and consistent through the years.In fact, all income tax brackets above the $80k mark saw a similar increase.In contrast, it was a decreasing trend for the lower income brackets between the $25k and $50k levels.These ...
The average expenditure of all Singapore households is $4,388 per month. This is according to the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) report released last month by the Singapore Department of Statistics.Households staying in 5-room and executive HDB flats spend an average of $4,926 per month, while those in 3-rooms and 4-rooms spend $2,482 and $3,551 respectively.Families ...
A forum letter to the Straits Times highlighted a different way to measure affordability.Based on Numbeo’s “house price to income ratio”, Singapore ranks below major cities like Tokyo, Barcelona, Milan, Dublin, Toronto, New York City, Geneva, Oslo, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Sydney, Vienna, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Zurich, Copenhagen and Berlin.This means: if we …
So, we now know some of the 110,000 foreigners in Singapore make more than $7k a month.But from the discussions in the online forums frequented by expats, it seems they are paid much more. E.g. here and here.And it seems $260k per annum is still not really enough… I quote the income/expenditure breakdown given ...
In perhaps another “forward looking” article in today’s Straits Times, it’s mentioned that graduates are “rushing” into private banking and wealth management.What’s forward looking is perhaps the talk of these private bankers earning “five- or even six-figure pay packets in a month.”Wow.But let’s do a reality check.A …
With rising GDP and record housing prices, and talk of “dual economy“, this recession seems not so much of a recession at all.Unless you have lost your job.A BBC poll says two-thirds of the people in UK are “hit” by the downturn. What they mean is that 66.6% of the people know someone who ...
Why are there economic fluctuations? Why will there always be boom times and downturns?There are many theories: businesses and governments over-investing, banks over-lending, people over-spending, and even politics.Without doubt, there is always true underlying economic growth with all the innovations and true productivity improvement. However, the economy in the real world …
Employers polled by HR Business Solutions say that they will give an average of 5.2% in increment in 2008.The Business Times reported HRBS’ Managing Principal Elaine Ng as saying, “Pay increase in 2008 is expected to be higher than in 2007 across Asia-Pacific, looking at both median and mean (average) figure.” (BT, 24 ...
The HDB resale price index has set a record high of 140.0 according to HDB’s flash estimate released early this month.More than half a year into Singapore’s “worst” recession and after private property prices crashed more than 20%, the resilient HDB prices manage to buck the trend and even set a national record - ...
There are 2 ways to withdraw from CPF. Each can be viewed as “easy” or “hard” depending on how you look at it. Let’s first talk about the more straightforward one:You work diligently and both you and your employer contribute to your CPF accounts (as mandated by law).Then at age 55, you can ...
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