Tax spies and top income bracket

Mr Ooi Boon Jin, head of international executive services at KPMG, made this observation in today's BT. He said, "Our study has recorded a general decline in top personal income rates over the past seven years, but for 2010 we are seeing indications that a reversal may be on the way."

A reversal in falling tax rates in attempt to drive tax collections to pay for the trillions of stimulus packages implemented over the last 12 months.

In another development reported in today's BT, Mr Mochamad Tjiptardjo, the new tax chief since last month, said, "(Indonesia) must boost tax revenues significantly to meet the government's ambitious target in a country where tax evasion has been routine."

How does he plan to do it? Among the many initiatives, he intends to send "tax spies" to places to gather evidences of Indonesians have stowed their ill-gotten gains and evading taxes.

So if you are a high income earner, it is time you seriously review your tax residency status if you have not.

KPMG illustrated that a Singapore tax resident would pay top personal tax rate of 20% if and if their next chargeable income exceeds SGD$320,000 or USD217,317/-. If you are a Malaysia tax resident, you would have the honour of paying the top personal income tax rate of 27% at a significantly modest annual income of USD28,470/-.