<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>Tax cheat made fake vouchers
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Director jailed 8 months, to pay $1.06m penalty for $265k tax evasion </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Elena Chong, Courts Correspondent
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->A DIRECTOR of a construction company who cooked the books in order to evade about $265,500 in taxes was jailed for eight months yesterday.
Seah Boon Huat, 56, was also ordered to pay a penalty of $1.06 million, which is four times the tax evaded.
If he does not pay the penalty, he will be behind bars for another 10 months.
He is the first person convicted under Section 96A of the Income Tax Act, enacted in 2003 to deter serious tax evasion.
Seah admitted fiddling with the accounts of Project Building Construction by creating fictitious subcontractor payment vouchers amounting to $1.07 million for the year of assessment 2004, and $135,700 the following year.
The company itself has been fined $60,000 and also ordered to pay a penalty of $1.06 million upon admitting to two charges of omitting income from its returns for the two years with intent to evade tax.
Four similar charges against Seah and the company, for also having dodged taxes between 2000 and 2003, were considered during sentencing.
An Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) statement said the inflated expenses totalled $1.7 million for the years of assessment 2000 to 2005, resulting in tax undercharged of $361,692.
Yesterday, Iras prosecutor Patrick Nai said Seah had created fictitious invoices to make it look like Project had paid its subcontractors, thus inflating its expenses for the two years of assessment.
Seah even forged the subcontractors' signatures on the cash payment vouchers so it looked like they had acknowledged receipt of the payments.
The court heard that Seah used the money for his personal needs.
[email protected]
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Director jailed 8 months, to pay $1.06m penalty for $265k tax evasion </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Elena Chong, Courts Correspondent
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->A DIRECTOR of a construction company who cooked the books in order to evade about $265,500 in taxes was jailed for eight months yesterday.
Seah Boon Huat, 56, was also ordered to pay a penalty of $1.06 million, which is four times the tax evaded.
If he does not pay the penalty, he will be behind bars for another 10 months.
He is the first person convicted under Section 96A of the Income Tax Act, enacted in 2003 to deter serious tax evasion.
Seah admitted fiddling with the accounts of Project Building Construction by creating fictitious subcontractor payment vouchers amounting to $1.07 million for the year of assessment 2004, and $135,700 the following year.
The company itself has been fined $60,000 and also ordered to pay a penalty of $1.06 million upon admitting to two charges of omitting income from its returns for the two years with intent to evade tax.
Four similar charges against Seah and the company, for also having dodged taxes between 2000 and 2003, were considered during sentencing.
An Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) statement said the inflated expenses totalled $1.7 million for the years of assessment 2000 to 2005, resulting in tax undercharged of $361,692.
Yesterday, Iras prosecutor Patrick Nai said Seah had created fictitious invoices to make it look like Project had paid its subcontractors, thus inflating its expenses for the two years of assessment.
Seah even forged the subcontractors' signatures on the cash payment vouchers so it looked like they had acknowledged receipt of the payments.
The court heard that Seah used the money for his personal needs.
[email protected]
