Found this article on Facebook
'She' in this case, refers to Ms Nicole Seah
The video refers to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY9yU2r9ywM
It is a long story. If you have watched the video, she quoted certain numbers which is the key reason that disappointed me. First, she said that the increase in GST from 5% to 7% increases the Government Tax revenue by $1.9 billion. I don't really know how she got the number, even after searching through the Annual Report of IRAS, and looking at the public finance account in Singstat. I can only estimate the impact, on per year basis, it is definitely much lower than $1.9 billion. Just now, out of curiosity, I went to google this phrase "GST increases $1.9 billion tax revenue", to my shock, New Zealand also increases its GST (from 12.5% to 15%), but in 2010, and they estimate this increase will increase their tax revenue by $1.9 billion also. I am not really sure whether is this just a mere coincidence. Google never return me any estimates on the impact of GST from 5% to 7% in Singapore case though. This is the reason why I have some doubts over the $1.9 billion claimed by Nicole Seah. (Anyway, she has also conveniently ignore the fact that income taxes have been lowered in the recent budget)
Next, she said that only $0.4 billion of the $1.9 billion go to the poor. Again, I dun know how she got the number. As far as I know, the government did not put a breakdown as to how much money go to the poor, and how much money go to the rich. They only break down by the expenses that they incur for education, health, water resources, national development and so forth. In addition, to response to her next statement "where does the rest of the money go to?", it is easily answerable if you look at the public finance section of Singstat. There is a total of roughly $2 billion increase in development expenditures (not operating expenditure!) in 2008, and a further $1 billion increase in 2009 (despite the $3 billion fall in the revenue collected by the government). Now, this is where the money go to. Is it legitimate? I would say definitely. Is it something that can be easily found? I spent roughly 10 minutes to get this information.
Finally, she implied that we (as in average Singaporeans) are the one who pay for Minister's high salary (particularly Lee Hsien Loong's), enable PAP to use our funds to do upgrading work. Is this really the case? While there might be some truth in it, the data speaks louder than words. In 2009, there are about 3 millions workers in Singapore, inclusive of foreigners and residents, but the number of people assessed for income tax is slightly more than 1 million. This means that if you pay income tax, you are the top 1/3 earner in Singapore. Out of which, people earning $100,000 per year and above are contributing 80% to the personal income tax. These people constitute about 20% of the total taxpayers, which is around 6 to 7% of Singapore Labor force. So it is the rich people who pay the bulk of the income taxes, not the middle-income, not the poor.
th and more importantly, still enjoy budget surpluses. One is definitely come from the income taxes from the rich. However, the bulk are contributed by the corporate income tax ($9.5 billion in 2009 of which companies earning $5 million per year contributes $8 billion), property taxes, custom duties (for liquors, and cigarettes), stamp duties and betting taxes. With the 2 IRs, I believed that the betting taxes are going to increase tremendously. For the corporate income taxes, one result that is not surprising is that taxes from financial institutions alone contribute 2.8 billion, which is around 7.5% of total tax revenue that the government collected.
So what does all these numbers tell us? We are not the one who pay for the high salaries. This is the main contribution to the budget surplus. By implying, or even, directly saying that WE pay the minister's salary, most people over-estimate their earnings capacity. This is the kind of 'truth' that she talks during her rally speech. I would think that by being bimbotic, is better than someone who tell stuffs that are untrue probably due to her lack of research, or even worse, with the intention to deceive the audience and Singaporeans at large.
Hope that this will help in your voting.
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