loner's heaven

Why medicine when we’re not sick?

No harm spending the next 5 minutes reading what’s on the mind of a 20 year-old, entering the workforce in three year’s time.

Unlike my friends of the same age group, who goes clubbing and get themselves drunk, I am one who grew up in a middle class family, which cannot even afford for an annual family trip to Disneyland. When I saw the article entitled, “A Budget For A Truly Global City”, I decided to throw in my two cent’s worth.

Increase in GST is to shift from direct taxes to indirect taxes in view of the graying population? Is that supposed to imply that the ageing population able to pay for higher living costs? The point: why transfer the costs onto the individuals when there are larger players of the various industries who can afford to pay higher taxes?

While it might seem like there is not much of a change between decreasing corporate taxes by 2 percentage points and increasing GST by the same percentage, the amount of money that forms the base, I believe, varies tremendously.

Quoting from an article entitled, “Race to Lower Corporate Taxes Hurting Governments' Bottom Lines – Report” published on Oneworld.net, which talks about reduction in corporate taxes hurting the country’s bottom lines in New York, it states, "Governments must stop this tax competition if they are serious about ensuring a sustainable future for their societies," said Guy Ryder, the general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which carried out the study.

I have always been a firm believer that the increase in GST will contribute to the further developments of Singapore and though certainly part of it is to offset the decrease in corporate taxes. It might be a bitter pill for us to swallow, but the only way to fight it off is to adapt to it. Till now, that opinion has not changed one bit. One thing I never understood was, why the bitter pill when we’re not sick in the first place?

We are seeing better transport facilities built; we are seeing more investors coming to Singapore we are seeing Singapore moving forward as a more competitive country. Singaporeans should feel proud of ourselves, because we contributed to all these. Well, of course, not forgetting the investors who made millions and returned part of their earnings to the society as part of their corporate social responsibility to be a caring corporate citizen, who cares about the environment where they operate in. No pun intended, though.

Source: http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/136076/1/ , http://www.todayonline.com/pdf_main.asp?pubdate=20070226 (page 6)

posted by yang @ 1:01 AM