Tag Archives: Singapore Property

Investors, home seekers throng property launches over weekend

FEAR and uncertainty over how gains from property sales would be taxed vanished as quickly as they came last week.

Home seekers still thronged showflats over the weekend and smaller apartments remained popular picks.

Turnout at property launches was healthy, observed DMG & Partners Securities analyst Brandon Lee, who visited a handful of showflats in the last few days.

News that the government could change income tax laws on profits from property sales did not seem to have an adverse impact, he said.

Word got round last Wednesday of a proposal to make current laws clearer – by guaranteeing that anyone who sells only one property in any four-year period will not be taxed on the gains. Continue reading →

In the recent property boom that ended last year, Mr Lee (not his real name), a vice-president in a company here, sold three properties within a year.

One was a home he had lived in for many years, while the other two were investment properties whose prices were too good to pass up.

Just before he sold the third property, Mr Lee’s lawyer warned him that all this buying and selling might get him into trouble with the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras).

Specifically, Iras could deem him a property ‘trader’, which means that he relies on property transactions for income. If this happened, the profits he had earned on the three properties would have been added to his income that year, significantly increasing his tax burden.

With the property market in hyperdrive, however, Mr Lee, who is in his 30s, decided to take the risk and sell the third property. ‘If you’re going to get whacked, you’re going to get whacked,’ he said.

Fortunately for him, Iras left him alone. But the period of indecision he suffered over whether he would be taxed on the sale is not uncommon for property investors and genuine owners, even if they space out their property sales over a number of years. Continue reading →