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What is the Goods and Services (GST) and how it works ?

Goods and Services Tax or GST is a broad-based consumption tax levied on the import of goods (collected by Singapore Customs) as well as nearly all supplies of goods and services in Singapore. In other countries like in EU, GST is known as the Value-Added Tax or VAT. The current GST rate is 9% with effect from 1 January 2024.

When do a business need to register for GST ?

A business must register for GST when its taxable turnover exceeds $1 million (compulsory registration) or on a voluntary basis (voluntary registration)

Taxable turnover refers to the total value of all taxable supplies made in Singapore in the course or furtherance o businesses, which include the following:

1. Standard-rated supplies (e.g. local supply of goods or services including the supply of imported low-value goods to individuals and businesses in Singapore) and
2. Zero-rated supplies to overseas (e.g. export of goods or supply of international services)

but taxable turnover exclude the following:

1. exempt supplies;
2. out-of-scope supplies;
3. sales of capital assets (e.g. sales of fixed assets such as machinery, equipment, office land and building, furniture)

Compulsory Registration

A business must register for GST if your taxable turnover exceeds S$1 million.

1. Under the retrospective view, businesses must register for GST if the value of their annual taxable turnover at the end of each calendar year (i.e. 31 December) exceeds $1 million. You are expected to register for GST by the 30th January of the following year. You will be registered for GST on 1 March. 
2. Under the prospective view, businesses must register for GST if their annual taxable turnover is expected to exceed S$1 million in the next 12 months. You must register within 30 days from the date of your forecast and you will be registered on the 31st day of your forecast date.

• Signed contracts or agreements
• Accepted quotations or confirmed purchase orders received from customers
• Invoices to customers
• Past income statements that show the taxable turnover for the past 12-month period was close to S$1 million and is on an increasing trend.

Exception to Compulsory GST Registration

1. Exemption to GST registration

A business may apply for exemption from GST registration if they are able to show that:

1. Your zero-rated supplies over total taxable supplies exceeds 90% or
2. You would be in a net refundable position had you been GST registered. Net refundable position refers to a situation where the total amount of output tax collected from your customers is less than the total amount of import GST claimable on imports and/or purchases from GST-registered suppliers.

To apply for exemption, please complete the form GST F2 Application for Exemption from Registration  and submit it together with all the required documents stated in the form.

2. You qualify for GST registration under retrospective view but not under the prospective view

• Your taxable turnover for the next 12 months will not exceed S$1 million.
• The taxable turnover is expected to be lower due to specific circumstances (e.g. one off major contract or significant business downsizing or termination of business license contributing a significant size of the annual turnover)
• You have the detailed computation to showing how the taxable turnover for the next 12 months < S$1 million.

Voluntary Registration

A business may apply for voluntary registration of GST even if you do not satisfy the compulsory GST registration.

To qualify for voluntary registration, a business must satisfy the following conditions:

1.  Your business makes taxable supplies;
2.  Your business only makes out-of-scope supplies. Out-of-scope supplies mainly refer to sales of goods which did not enter Singapore and goods in transit; 
3.  Your business makes exempt supplies of financial services that are also international services; or
4.  Your business procures services from overseas service providers or imports low-value goods and you would not be entitled to full input tax credit even if you were GST-registered.

You need to ensure that you qualify for voluntary GST registration and fulfil all the conditions below before registering for GST.

1.  The company director/ sole-proprietor/ partner/ trustee /preparer of GST returns has completed and passed the e-Learning course “Overview of GST“, before submitting the registration form. This is to ensure that you have a good understanding of the obligations and responsibilities of a GST-registered business before registering for GST.

• The preparer of your GST returns is an Accredited Tax Advisor (ATA) or Accredited Tax Practitioner (ATP); or
• The business is applying to be registered under the Overseas Vendor Registration Simplified Pay-only Registration Regime. 

A voluntary-registered business must remain registered for at least 2 years.

A voluntary-registered business will need to apply for GIRO for payment and refund of GST.

b. Any business that apply for voluntary GST registration from 1 Apr 2026.

*These are companies that are incorporated within 6 months from the time they submit their application for GST registration.

Guarantee for Voluntary Registration

You may be requested to provide a guarantee when registering for GST or applying/ renewing GST schemes.

The guarantee is usually required for a period of 2 years for voluntary GST registrations.  In the case of GST schemes, the guarantee will cover the effective period of the GST schemes from 3 to 5 years.

Responsibilities of a GST-Registered Business

Once a business has registered for GST, the business will be a collecting agent for the government. it will need to fulfill the responsibilities of a GST-registered business starting from the effective date of registration. Complying with these responsibilities will increase your administrative costs.

1. Charge and account for GST on standard-rated supplies

For supplies of goods and services made in Singapore (standard-rated supplies), you need to charge and account for 9% GST.

From 1 Jan 2020, GST is charged on Business-to-Business (B2B) supplies of imported services under the Reverse Charge regime and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) supplies on imported digital services under the Overseas Vendor Registration regime.  

With effect from 1 Jan 2023, GST will be extended to imported low-value goods and B2C imported non-digital services.

However, if you make relevant supplies [i.e. local sales of prescribed goods (mobile phones, memory cards and off-the-shelf software) exceeding $10,000 in value] that are subject to customer accounting, you should not charge GST to your GST-registered customer. Instead, your GST-registered customer will need to account for the GST as his output tax.

2. Filing of GST returns

All GST returns must be submitted via mytax.iras.gov.sg within one month from the end of each accounting period.

You can check your filing due date on myTax Portal.

If there is no transaction, a “NIL” GST return must still be filed.

Penalties for late filing or non-filing of GST returns

Failure to file GST return is punishable with a fine up to $5,000 and in default of payment, an imprisonment term up to 6 months.

For non/late submission of GST F5/ F8 returns, IRAS may:

• Impose a late submission penalty of $200 immediately after the GST return filing due date.
• A penalty of $200 will continue to be imposed for every completed month up to a maximum of $10,000 for each outstanding F5/F8 return. You may refer to these examples on how the late submission penalty is imposed.
• Issue an estimated assessment of the overdue GST, along with late payment penalties. IRAS may consider revising the estimated assessment and late payment penalties only upon receiving the overdue GST return.

Payment of GST after submission of returns

Tax due must be paid within 1 month from the end of each accounting period (by the day when the GST return is due). If you are on GIRO plan for GST payment, GIRO deductions will take place on the 15th day of the month after the payment due date.

Penalties for late payment of GST

• A 5% penalty will be levied on the amount of tax unpaid by the due date.
• An additional penalty of 2% per month on tax remaining unpaid after 60 days from the due date of the prescribed accounting period (subject to a maximum of 50% of the outstanding tax) may also be imposed. You may refer to these examples on how the late payment penalties are imposed.

3. Keep proper business and accounting records

You must keep all business and accounting records for at least 5 years, even after the business has ceased or deregistered from GST.

Learn about the types of record a GST-registered business will need to keep.

4. Display Requirement

Prices, advertisements or publications made to the public must be inclusive of GST. 

GST-registered businesses must show GST-inclusive prices on all price displays to the public (e.g. price tags, price lists, advertisements, publicity brochures, website). Prices that are quoted, whether written or verbal, must be GST-inclusive as the public needs to know the final price they have to pay upfront.

However, hotels and food & beverage (F&B) establishments that impose service charge on their goods and services are excluded. They are not required to display GST-inclusive prices to ease their operations.

Otherwise, they may have to display separate price lists for dine-in and take-away items, or to re-compute prices whenever the establishment reduces or waives the service charge.

These GST-registered hotels and F&B establishments must still display a prominent statement informing customers that the prices displayed are subject to GST and service charge.

GST is to be charged on both the amount for the service and the service fee imposed by the supplier.

Failure to comply with each of these requirements is an offence that can result in a fine of up to $5,000.

5. Issue Tax Invoices with GST Registration Number

A GST-registered business is required to issue tax invoices/customer accounting tax invoices for your standard-rated supplies.

If the total amount payable for your supply (including GST) does not exceed $1,000, you may issue a simplified tax invoice.

Your GST Registration Number should be reflected on all your tax invoices, simplified tax invoices and receipts.

In general, a tax invoice must be issued within 30 days from the time of supply.

A tax invoice does not need to be issued for zero-rated supplies , exempt supplies and deemed supplies or to a non-GST registered customer.

6. Notify IRAS of Changes

A GST-registered business needs to inform the Comptroller of GST within 30 days after any change to its business circumstances. These changes include:

• Change in GST mailing address;
• Change in business constitution or ownership;
• Change in partner(s) or particulars of partner(s); and
• Set up of new partnership businesses with the same composition of partners.

7. Account for GST at point of de-registration

When a GST registration is cancelled, the GST-registered business will need to account for GST on business assets held on the last day of registration if:

• GST  was previously claimed on the business assets; and
• Total market value of these business assets is more than $10,000

These assets include inventories, fixed assets, non-residential properties and goods imported under the various GST schemes.

Please refer to our webpage on cancelling GST registration for more details.

What are pre-registration input tax ?

Pre-registration input tax is GST incurred by businesses on goods and services acquired before they are registered for GST. Based on the general input tax claiming conditions, such GST incurred before registration is not claimable since the business is not GST-registered at the time of supply.

However, a special relief is available to allow businesses to claim preregistration input tax in their first GST F5 return. This is provided that all the conditions in the “Pre-registration GST: Checklist for Self-Review of Eligibility of Claim” are satisfied. The checklist includes a calculator feature to help you compute the amount of Pre-registration GST claimable.

If you are registered for GST on or after 1 July 2015, you can claim in full the GST incurred on the following goods and services acquired within 6 months before your GST registration date:

a) Goods held by your business at the point of GST registration; and

b) Property rental, utilities and services, which are not directly attributable to any supply made by your business before GST registration.

For all other goods and services acquired before your GST registration date which are partially consumed before registration or used to make supplies straddling GST registration (i.e. supplies made before and after registration), you need to apportion the GST incurred. Only the portion of GST that is attributable to the supplies made after GST registration is claimable.

De-registration of GST

A GST-registered business can de-register GST subject to certain qualifying conditions. The person authorized to access myTax Portal to submit GST returns can log in to mytax.iras.gov.sg to apply for the cancellation of GST registration online.

Most online applications for the cancellation of GST registration are approved on the day of application, with exceptions of some that may take 1 to 10 working days to process.

Compulsory cancellation of GST registration

A GST registered business must apply for cancellation of GST registration within 30 days when it has:

1. Stopped making taxable supplies and do not intend to make taxable supplies in future;
2. Ceased for business;
3. Transferred as a whole to another person (the buyer or transferee of your business needs to determine if it is required to register for GST); or
4. Changes in the form of the business entity (e.g. from a general partnership to a limited liability partnership, or from a sole-proprietorship business converted to a private limited company). The business need not inform IRAS if the business has been amalgamated, or the sole-proprietorship business has been converted to a partnership (or vice versa), as IRAS will cancel the GST registration upon receiving the information from ACRA.

Voluntary cancellation of GST registration

A GST-registered business may apply to cancel its GST registration if it is not liable for registration.

For a voluntary-registered business, it must remain registered for 2 years before it can cancel its GST registration.

Filing your final GST returns upon GST de-registration

You will be notified of the approval of the cancellation of GST registration and the effective date of cancellation by IRAS.

A final GST return (GST F8) will be issued to the GST-registered business to file and account for GST up till the last day of the GST registration, which is one day before the effective date of cancellation of GST registration.

The GST-registered business cancelling the registration is required to:

1. Submit the GST F8 and account for GST within 1 month from the end of the prescribed accounting period stated on the return; and
2. File all outstanding GST returns and
3. Make any outstanding GST payment.

Contact Us

If you need help in fulfilling your duties and responsibilities as a GST-registered business, please do not hesitate to contact us via whatsapp or email to us directly.