Singapore to Raise Property Tax Rates for Luxury Homeowners

By Pooja Thakur & Sharon Chen

Singapore plans to raise property levies for luxury homeowners as it seeks to tax wealthy residents in the island-state after the government imposed more measures to curb property speculation last month.

The higher tax will apply to the top 1 percent of homeowners who live in their own residences, or 12,000 properties, Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in his budget speech yesterday, without giving a definition of what constitutes a high-end home. The government will also raise tax rates for vacant investment properties or those that are rented out, he said. he higher taxes come after Singapore last month increased a stamp duty on homebuyers and imposed curbs on industrial properties as it extended measures it started introducing in 2009 to cool property speculation. Residential prices climbed to a record in the fourth quarter amid low interests and as an increase in the number of millionaires drove up demand.

“Owning high-end real estate here for investment is becoming less of an attractive proposition,” said Alan Cheong, senior director of research and consultancy at broker Savills (Singapore) Pte. “This may affect high-end properties owned by foreigners, who do not have a place of residence in Singapore. This will encourage more to take their capital overseas.”

The property index tracking 39 developers fell 0.8 percent to a one-month low as of 9:29 a.m. in Singapore trading.CapitaLand Ltd. (CAPL), Singapore’s biggest developer by assets, declined 1 percent to S$3.88. City Developments Ltd. (CIT), the second largest, slid 0.4 percent to S$11.30.

Hong Kong

Singapore’s latest efforts were announced three days afterHong Kong increased property taxes. The Hong Kong government last week doubled sales taxes on property costing more than HK$2 million ($258,000) and targeted commercial real estate for the first time as bubble risks spread in the world’s most expensive place to buy an apartment.

“The property tax is a wealth tax and is applied irrespective of whether lived in, vacant or rented out,” Shanmugaratnam said. “Those who live in the most expensive homes should pay more property tax than others.”

For a condominium occupied by the owner in Singapore’s central region with an assessed annual rental value of S$70,000 ($56,547), the tax will rise 5 percent to S$2,780, according to the budget statement. If that home is rented out, the tax will climb 21 percent to S$8,500, according to an example highlighted in the statement.

Based on a 3 percent rental yield, that property is worth S$2.3 million ($1.9 million). Gains in levies for properties assessed at higher rental values will also increase at a faster pace, it said. For a house with an assessed rental value of S$150,000, worth S$5 million based on the same yield assumption, the tax will rise 60 percent to S$24,000. The revised taxes will take full effect from January 2015, according to the statement.

‘Wealth Tax’

“It is a wealth tax,” Yee Jenn Jong, a non-elected member of parliament from the opposition Workers’ Party, told reporters. “There’s been a lot of people that have made a lot of money through property and the government is using that as a way to get additional revenue to offset certain goodies they’re giving to those in the lower income.”

The Singapore government last month introduced curbs where home buyers have to pay 5 percentage points to 7 percentage points more in stamp duties. Among other measures, it also imposed the added levies for permanent residents when they buy their first home, while Singaporeans will have to pay the tax starting with their second purchase.

Foreign Labor

In the budget, Singapore also tightened curbs on foreign labor for a fourth consecutive year, as the government seeks to reduce companies’ reliance on overseas workers amid a public backlash over the influx.

Increasing wealth in the island-state has contributed to rising property prices. Singapore’s millionaire households rose by 14 percent in 2011, according to a Boston Consulting study. The proportion of millionaire homes in the city of 5.3 million people was 17 percent, the highest in the world, followed by Qatar and Kuwait.

“From a progressive tax view point, it’s to be expected and probably quite fair,” said Tan Su Shan, managing director of wealth management at DBS Group Holdings Ltd., who’s also a nominated member of Parliament. “From a developers’ point of view, it’s yet another pill to swallow.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Pooja Thakur in Singapore at pthakur@bloomberg.net; Sharon Chen in Singapore at schen462@bloomberg.net

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