How Much Tax Will Singaporeans Save?
Well it’s a pretty slow news day… for personal finance matters that is, so I thought I might as well calculate the amount of money taxpayers are going to save from now until the next general election. Riveting stuff, I know.
I suppose you could check out Singapore Airlines’ Spontaneous Escapes destinations for August 2023 if you just want to nope out of Singapore for a bit in light of recent happenings, but they‘d put a Member of Parliament to sleep compared to the exciting events we’ve witnessed over the past month.
No by-election
For those who haven’t been paying attention to what’s perhaps our country’s most turbulent parliament term in modern times, we now have 5 vacant/vacating seats across 5 Group Representation Constituencies (GRC), and there are no plans for any elections to take place to fill these empty seats.
Heck, we may even get a press conference from the people in blue as early as tomorrow morning announcing a 6th Member of Parliament to be booted out in this term of parliament, and it’s perhaps the first time we see so many empty seats in the chamber.
Well, more than the usual number of empty seats anyway.
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Salaries saved
While some people see this as a failing in our democratic system, I’m a clucking optimist – this term of parliament is going to see substantial savings from now until the next bunch of parliamentarians are voted in!
Elected Members of Parliament get S$192,500 a year, so us taxpayers are going to save almost S$400,000 a year on the two Members of Parliament who got booted out of parliament – one for lying to the Speaker in Parliament, and the other for allegedly lying with the Speaker outside of Parliament.
While the Speaker seat and Minister For Transport position would certainly be filled by other people who would then assume the salary, they will no longer get their MP allowance, which is yet another S$192,500 per person savings!
Also, it seems unclear whether the President-to-be’s Coordinating Minister position would be replaced. I’m going to hazard a guess and say no, which means that we the people of Singapore are also going to save on this ministerial salary. I can’t really find a definite answer, but I suppose a Coordinating Minister is as senior as a Minister can be, so it should be an MR1 ministerial pay which is possibly around S$1.6 million annually.
Grand total
Given we still have a solid 2.5 years to the next election, this Parliament term is going to see a savings of… almost S$6 million! That’s a lot of chicken wings, and at least one shiny Lee Kuan Yew dollar per citizen!
National Day is less than a month away and it is probably appropriate now to cheer “stand up for Singapore”… but perhaps the members of some Members of Parliament need to do anything but stand up given the circumstances.
Sigh.
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