Keinian ideals – Costs of living in Melbourne (versus Singapore) part 1: Taxes

I came across this post by mrbiao, titled Analysis on Canada vs Singapore, again (Day 94 in Vancouver). His post raised quite a few relevant points that could have just applied to Australia as well as Canada.

This is probably the most popular question that friends endup asking. “Australia tax so high, good meh?”

Income tax: Australian’s income tax is of course much higher than Singapore’s.
If we were to take an average Singaporean university grad’s income, say $3,000 per month so that’s $36,000 per year.

Australia – Using the simple tax calculator, we end up paying AUD$6,150, or about 17.08%. This is a rough figure, refer to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for more details.

Singapore – If we refer to the tax rates found on the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) website, we end up paying SGD$680, or about 1.89%. Note that there might be other possible reliefs like NSMan, insurance, charity etc.

Goods and Services Tax (GST): Australia does 10%, with Singapore holding at 7% for now.

This seems to be a pretty clear-cut case isn’t it? If we are judging from the numbers alone, why the fcuk would people want to leave Singapore for Australia? Or anywhere else for that matter?

Logically, we should conclude that other pull factors exist in the picture. I’ll do my best to write about some in a later post, so keep an eye open for now.

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Tags: Australia, living costs, Melbourne, Singapore, The Keinian Idealist

You might be interested reading in these posts:

• Keinian ideals – Costs of living in Melbourne (versus Singapore) part 2: Accomodation
• Keinian ideals – Costs of living in Melbourne (versus Singapore) part 3: Transport
• Vibrant colors – Tesselaar Tulip Festival