Tax cheat gets two weeks' jail
Posted: 18 January 2013 1546 hrs
SINGAPORE: A property agent has been sentenced to two weeks' jail for using fake stamp certificates to cheat the taxman.
Koh Siew Buay, 50, pleaded guilty to three charges in December 2012 and was sentenced on Friday. Another charge was taken into consideration during sentencing.
She will serve her jail term from February 22.
Between January and June 2011, she collected the full amount of stamp duty payable from the tenants for three rental transactions she handled. But she entered shorter rental periods and lower rental amounts into the e-Stamping system of the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS).
Koh was then issued three stamp certificates.
She used them to create three counterfeit stamp "certificates" that reflected the higher stamp duty amounts payable and presented them to the tenants.
She pocketed the difference between what they had paid to her and what she had paid to IRAS, and underpaid the government S$532.
-CNA/ac
