Director who evaded $1.25m in GST jailed 8 months, fined $4.4m
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A sole director of a freight forwarding company was fined $4,419,000 and sentenced to eight months' jail on Thursday for fraudulently evading goods and services tax (GST) on the import of goods and for falsifying documents.
Singapore Customs said yesterday that Ho Shyan Tien, 44, evaded paying about $1,250,000 in GST between 2015 and 2019 by providing false values of goods imported by his customers.
The Singaporean pleaded guilty in court to three charges over evading GST and to three others over falsifying documents.
Singapore Customs said the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) conducted a check in June 2019 on the GST return submission made by one of Ho's customers who is an importer.
It found discrepancies in the cargo clearance permits - which are required by an importer to account for the import and tax payment of goods - and got Singapore Customs' help to verify the GST amount paid by the importer.
Said Singapore Customs: "It was found that the GST amounts stated in the importer's copy of the (permits) were higher than what was in Singapore Customs' records."
Further verification showed that the importer had paid the GST amounts reflected in its copy of the permits.
Singapore Customs investigated Ho's company Sea-Net and found that he masked the original values in the invoices by pasting altered values over them.
He photocopied the invoices and gave them to a declaring agent to apply for the permits.
Ho received some of the invoices in an editable document which allowed him to amend the values directly.
The declaring agent would pay Customs the GST based on the documents it received from Sea-Net and bill Sea-Net the amount, before sending the cargo clearance permits to Sea-Net once they were approved.
"Ho's actions resulted in the under-declaration of the values of the goods and under-payment of GST to Singapore Customs," said the government agency.
To conceal his scheme, Ho altered the values and GST amounts in the approved permits and gave the documents to his customers.
For each charge of fraudulently evading GST, Ho could have been fined up to 20 times the amount evaded. He could have also been fined up to $10,000, jailed up to 12 months or both for falsifying documents.
