Free-Riding the Singapore Welfare System

 

The term "free-rider" is currently having its day on the Internet. As I've made a decision to many years ago to align more fully with our Capitalist system rather than the Political system, I think my actual aim is to find as many legitimate means to free-ride in Singapore, always put in slightly less to extract maximum benefits from the system.  

The truth is that the kind of moves I make are quite noob-level. An ordinary employee can use the following means to free-ride in Singapore today :

• Open an SRS account, put in the maximum $15,300 every to get tax deductibles.
• Inject $7,000 into you and your spouse's CPF-SA.
• Take more public transport as it is running at a loss and funded by tax-payer money.
• If you serve NS, use credits to buy New Balance running shoes. I even got a pair for my dad.

If you level up as an investor, you bring free-riding to a whole new level. Singapore is a welfare-state for the rentier. You can commit the following "tax atrocities" with no legal consequences :

• Invest in securities as dividends do not flow into personal taxation numbers and are not accounted for qualifying for HDB ownership.
• Buy REITs as REIT incomes do not even incur taxation at the corporate level when the REIT distributes 90% from rental proceeds.

I suspect incorporation will allow a person to level-up as a free-rider even further. I'm looking at the following schemes and studying them carefully and will consult a company secretary to make it high-priority for my business, do correct me if I am wrong : 

• $200,000 of revenue does not attract taxes for the first three years.
• Beyond the first $200,000, legitimate deductions for company expenses can be made. This is a 17% discount on cloud-hosting fees and software purchases which I already pay as an investment trainer. I can also buy an explicit PC or tablet to be used exclusively for work to free up my home PC resources.
• I can pay myself a minimum salary to lower the tax burden more.  
• If I hire a local worker, I can even get $30,000 under the Jobs Growth Incentive.
• This is not counting the startup funding I can get for my business. I already have a small web app launched for my ERM community. 

In short, I think folks with legitimate business are the biggest free-riders of all. The government will incentivise Singaporeans to invent new jobs. 

For folks who can code in middle-age, incorporation is probably the best move a person can make given all this age discrimination we are facing. Given that I already have some revenue, I will probably incorporate, hire an assistant before even deciding what new business I will get into beyond investment training. 

What a great time to be alive in Singapore!