Roasted meat wholesale company convicted for tax evasion

SINGAPORE — A roasted meat wholesale company was today (Nov 21) convicted of tax evasion and fined S$42,000 while one of its directors, Peh Tian Poh was also convicted of assisting the company to evade tax. The director was sentenced to six weeks’ jail and ordered to pay a total of S$354,961.76 in taxes and penalty.

Xing Wang Ji Roasted Meat Wholesale was convicted in court for failing to declare sales income amounting to about S$3.5 million in its Income Tax Returns for Years of Assessment 2005 to 2007, and for understating output tax totalling more than S$220,000 in its Goods and Services Tax (GST) returns, said the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) in a statement.

Xing Wang Ji, a GST-registered business, allowed customers who had specifically expressed their intention not to pay GST to avoid doing so. This was done the issuance of two types of sales invoices — standard and non-standard sales invoices.

Customers who did not want to pay GST for their purchases were issued the non-standard sales invoices, which omitted essential particulars such as the company name and address, GST-registration number as well as the amount of GST collected.

These sales were recorded separately in exercise books, which were discovered during investigations, said IRAS. Only partial sales records were handed to Xing Wang Ji’s part-time bookkeeper for the preparation of accounts to be submitted to IRAS.

Peh, who was responsible for issuing some of the non-standard invoices to Xing Wang Ji’s customers, was involved in making records of sales transactions in the exercise books. He was one of the directors who omitted the non-standard invoices when giving the sales records to the part-time bookkeeper.

IRAS said it is reviewing the appropriate action to be taken against the other director who was involved in the tax evasion.

Penalties for tax evasion can be up to four times the amount of tax evaded. In certain situations, jail terms may also be imposed.