Couple sentenced to jail and penalties of over $1.1m each for tax-related offences
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SINGAPORE - A husband-and-wife pair were sentenced to jail and ordered to pay penalties totalling more than $1.1 million each on Monday over tax-related offences.
Malaysian Lim Meng Fatt, 53, who is a Singapore permanent resident, was sentenced to a year and 16 weeks in jail and ordered to pay $1,163,668 in penalties.
His Singaporean wife, Gan Bee Bee, also 53, was sentenced to a year, four months and 17 weeks behind bars. She was ordered to pay penalties totalling $1,175,818.
The couple used to run body massage and foot reflexology firm Wan Lin Healthcare Centre Pte Ltd at Fu Lu Shou Complex in Rochor Road.
They abetted Wan Lin to evade a total of $140,378 in income tax for Years of Assessment (YA) 2015 and 2017.
They also omitted output tax totalling $84,304 in Wan Lin’s goods and services tax (GST) returns.
In addition, the pair evaded GST totalling $163,206 by cancelling Wan Lin’s GST registration in 2016, when, in fact, the company was still liable to be GST-registered.
Gan also abetted Wan Lin to make a false claim totalling $4,050 under the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme on Aug 12, 2015.
The PIC scheme, administered by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras), was a government subsidy open to all Singapore-registered companies that had active business operations here and employed at least three local workers.
Under the initiative, which expired in 2018, companies could convert qualifying expenditure that they had incurred, such as purchases of IT and automation equipment, into cash payouts.
Tax prosecutor Vanessa Chiam said that for YA2016, Gan intentionally aided Wan Lin to obtain a PIC cash payout that the firm was not entitled to.
Gan told Lim to falsely state in a PIC form dated Aug 12, 2015, that Wan Lin had incurred qualifying expenditure on “external training” purportedly pertaining to the use of an accounting software for $6,750 when, in fact, there was no such expenditure. Lim was not aware that the qualifying expenditure in the PIC form was false.
As a result, Iras disbursed a PIC cash payout of $4,050 under the scheme that Wan Lin was not entitled to.
On Monday, Lim was offered bail of $60,000 while his wife’s bail was set at $30,000.
They are expected to surrender themselves at the State Courts on Feb 1, 2023, to begin serving their sentences.
