It's kind of important︁ as a small company to be able to find an accountant or service provider that︂ you can work with that knows about these potential tax free rules. Also, as you︃ need a nominee director in Singapore, the service providers often have some requirements to reduce︄ their potential liability. Some I talked to required you to bank in Singapore.
I'd welcome︅ anyone that is running a SG company for some time to share their experiences.
To sum up the facts we know so far:
First, Sovereign, other service providers and also︆ the tax article you shared all mentions the rules for remittence to Singapore and source︇ of income. If you look at these rules they apply to SG tax resident companies.︈ Ok, so the consensus seem to be that a foreign run company is tax resident︉ in SG. If it was not SG tax resident it would seem like it should︊ be easier to avoid SG tax, however IRAS also writes that tax resident companies and︋ non tax resident companies are taxed in the same way, except for certain benefits for︌ tax resident companies. So then this makes it appear that a SG non tax resident︍ company is taxed differently in SG from say a UK ltd company, as a UK︎ company clearly wouldn't owe tax in SG if it has customers or a bank account️ in SG.
So that a SG non tax resident company is taxed as a tax resident company seems non counter-intuitive, and I susepect this is not the whole truth.
Ok, but lets continue assuming that the company is SG tax resident and the facts we have. Sovereign says that services income is taxable in SG unless you have a PE in another country. So, services is taxable in SG for the typical one man company run from outside SG without any other registration.
And trading income remitted to SG is taxable. This means that you can't have an ecommerce company that use Stripe, Paypal etc as these require settlement to a SG bank account. Then we're left we invoiced trades︀ like selling a container with stuff to another company somewhere, receiving payment to a bank︁ account outside SG somewhere. This can of course be useful, but limited as most people︂ would want to use the company for ecommerce or services income.
I believe it's can︃ be possible achieve zero tax in SG other ways, for example by having the company︄ as non tax resident. But there is no clear information on this anywhere.
