A 59-year-old Singaporean businessman operating an oil and gas equipment manufacturing firm was sentenced to six months’ jail and ordered to pay nearly $1 million in penalties after pleading guilty to wilfully evading tax and making false entries in his GST and income tax returns between 2010 and 2012.
- He pleaded guilty in the State Courts of Singapore. According to the Charges, he underpaid taxes of $455,692.51 and has since repaid this outstanding amount to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras).
- He faced a total of 30 charges for offences under the Income Tax Act and the Goods and Services Tax Act – relating to tax evasion and making false entries in which he falsely inflated his company’s expenses and also omitted sales made to two other companies. He pleaded guilty to 10 charges and the remaining charges were taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing.
- He faced a total of 9 charges for evading $421,995 in tax from 2008 to 2013 by inflating 7 business expenses and omitting business sales from Income Tax returns. He faced 21 charges of evading $33,698 in GST by making false entries in GST returns and not accounting for output tax sales.
- He was sentenced to a jail term of 6 months (sentences to run consecutively) for each of the 3 proceeded tax evasion charges and ordered to pay a penalty of $929,575 (i.e. three times the amount of tax undercharged). He was sentenced to a jail term of 14 weeks and 1 month (sentences to run concurrently with income tax offences) for the 7 proceeded GST evasion charges and ordered him to pay a penalty of $66,660, which is three times the amount of tax evaded.
- It is unclear whether he was represented by a Criminal Defence Lawyer during the presentation of his mitigation plea and when the Court imposed the sentence.
Tax evasion is an offence under the Income Tax Act and GST Act. The offence occurs you deliberately provide IRAS with inaccurate or incomplete information about your activities to reduce their tax liability or obtain undue tax credits and refunds.
More information on the case may be found here.