Commentary

Tax authorities and legislators all over the globe have been actively working to prevent tax evasion and promote global tax transparency for almost a decade now. As core components of the global financial ecosystem, FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and CRS (Common Reporting Standard) legislation aim to prevent tax evasion by compelling financial institutions to transmit certain information about certain account holders to their country(s) of tax domicile. Ultimately, their objective is to identify and discourage tax evasion by tax residents of countries using offshore banks and other Financial Accounts. 

By Pat Patel, Executive Director, Elevandi

Many businesses in Singapore have been forced to rethink their customer engagement and business strategy. In short, the pandemic provided an on-ramp for brands to transform their business models to address shifting consumer habits to set them up for success for the next couple of years. 

Worldwide, one-third of all food produced is wasted every year. That 1.3 billion tonnes of food is enough to feed 2 billion people – enough to feed the world’s hungry twice, with plenty of leftovers. This wasted food is worth US$1 trillion annually, and with each kilogram of food creating carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to the production of 25,000 plastic bottles, this waste is greatly costing the environment too.

The banking and capital markets industry has seen a monumental shift in how money is created, transferred, stored and owned. With the phenomenal growth of digitalisation - from the rise of cryptocurrency and blockchain, to new developments in open banking, businesses have what seems like endless opportunities at their feet. Despite this, Baker McKenzie’s digital transformation report revealed that 79% of executives in APAC still identify as digital laggards rather than digital leaders within their industry.

Digitalisation shouldn’t just be limited to processing automation – it can significantly  improve customer experience.  

The Pink Pandemic has taken an incredible toll around the world. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, at our current trajectory, East Asia and the Pacific (including A/NZ) will take another 168 years to close the gender gap — which means we will not see gender parity in our lifetimes.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, hybrid work arrangements have become the norm globally for organizations across industries. Locally, a strong majority of Singapore companies (78%) are leaning towards maintaining a hybrid schedule, according to recent data from Milieu Insight. At the same time, employees are far less enthusiastic about going all-in on one work environment, with only 12% prefer working from the office all the time and only 10% wanting to work remotely full-time.

Technology-based investment solutions can crunch numbers faster than any human, are less prone to emotion-driven decisions and they never sleep. And in many cases, they don’t charge as much as their human competition.

Singapore's healthcare system, like those of all developed countries, is swamped with data. The challenge - and the opportunity - is to use that data to become a more effective premium healthcare provider. This can be achieved through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI lets medical professionals analyse and derive insights from the huge datasets created by healthcare organisations, a feat that is just not possible for humans.

Recent tax case judgments in commodity-producing countries shine a spotlight on the important commodity transfer pricing challenges that have potential knock-on effects on the trading industry in Singapore.

The manufacturing industry has been the engine of Singapore’s economic growth since its inception. In 2018, the city-state was singled out as one of the best positioned countries for Industry 4.0 by the World Economic Forum with manufacturing contributing to 21.9% of Singapore's nominal gross domestic product (GDP).

Singapore’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate will be raised from the current 7% to 8% on 1 January 2023 and again from 8% to 9% on 1 January 2024, as announced by the Finance Minister in his Budget 2022 speech.

COVID-19 has disrupted the workplace permanently. Since the pandemic began two years ago, workers are getting more used to work-from-home or hybrid work arrangements.

Across Singapore, every industry has experienced fundamental transformation in the last two years – and the commercial real estate sector (CRE) is no exception.