Enforcement action: IRAS, 17 September 2026.
Two brothers who ran an automotive business were each sentenced to around five to six months' imprisonment and ordered to pay a penalty of $812,795. Although the company was GST-registered, it issued cash sales invoices for services without charging GST. Between 2013 and 2019, the cash it received from those sales was deposited into a separate, non-corporate bank account. The company understated its net profits in its income tax returns for the Years of Assessment 2015 and 2016, undercharging $219,978 of tax, and undercharged $50,953 in GST. The case also brought in the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act 1992, the law on laundering the proceeds of crime.
What this means for a Singapore SME
The scheme was simple, and so was what found it: cash takings that never reached the company's own account. For a business that takes cash, every sale belongs in the company's books and the company's bank account, with GST charged where the business is registered.
IRAS sets out the other side. Businesses and individuals are encouraged to disclose past tax mistakes at once, and IRAS treats such a disclosure as a mitigating factor when it decides what action to take. Offenders face a penalty of up to four times the amount of tax evaded.