GST for services

[carteki]

nowadays IRAS advocate voluntary registration for all biz. Biz owners are not supposed to suffer GST costs, its meant for consumers. The 1million threshold is no more applicable now.

From the IRAS Website (last updated Dec 2009 - 7 months ago)

GST is a self-assessed tax. Businesses are required to continually assess the need to be registered for GST.

In most cases, registering for GST is compulsory when:

* the turnover of your business is more than $1 million for the past 12 months; or
* you are currently making sales and you can reasonably expect the turnover of your business to be more than $1 million for the next 12 months.

Otherwise, you can choose to be voluntarily registered for GST. Please refer to the following links for more details.

Don't see anywhere where they "advocate" registering for GST.

What isn't mentioned here is that if you voluntarily register for GST then you are not allowed to deregister within 2 years.

[Strong Eagle]

For a non retail, business to business company, volunteering for GST registration is generally a good thing. Unlike most consumers, businesses will be GST registered and the additional 7 percent is a wash... the input tax amount.

It is good for your company because:

a) you get refunded on the GST tax you pay.
b) Charging GST suggests that you have some girth... at least a million turnover... unlikely that your GST registration will actually be checked.

[sierra2469alpha]

... unlikely that your GST registration will actually be checked.

Really?

[sundaymorningstaple]

I think SE means check by the vendor/seller. I know we have never bothered to actually check with ACRA/ROC/ROB to see if any of our vendor company's GST registration was voluntary or on account of revenue requirement in excess of 1million/annum. We just assume that it is. Benefit of the doubt? Having GST registration with under a million revenue show your client that you have at least another set of checks & balances with the government. (not that that hasn't been abused in the past though.....)

Anyway, welcome back stranger.