SINGAPORE — A senior manager of two exhibition printing businesses has to pay S$200,000 in fines and penalties for understating his tax returns, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) said.

Chong Teck Choy, 55, a senior manager at Wah Ye Advertising as well as Little Box Event and Exhibition Printing, was charged with making incorrect tax returns by failing to declare a total of S$900,000 in bonus income between 2014 and 2017.

This resulted in an undercharge of S$133,022 in tax, Iras said in a news release on Friday (Nov 13).

The court proceeded with two out of four charges and Chong pleaded guilty to making incorrect income tax returns without reasonable excuse. 

The other two charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

Court documents on the two proceeded charges showed that Chong was paid bonuses in December for 2015 and 2016 that amounted to S$630,000 when he was working with Wah Ye Advertising.

However, he did not declare the bonuses in his tax returns for the years of assessment 2016 and 2017. 

Investigations revealed that Chong had authorised other people to file his income tax returns on his behalf.

He left it entirely to them to report his income and file his returns. He did not take steps to ensure that his returns were correctly declared and did not check what was being filed.

With the bonuses omitted from his returns, the amount of tax he was undercharged came up to S$100,903, court documents showed. 

For his offences, Chong was ordered to pay a fine of S$6,000 and a penalty of S$201,806 — two times the amount of tax undercharged. 

Iras said: “Any person who gives incorrect information in their income tax returns without reasonable excuse or negligently will be liable to a penalty that is twice the amount of tax undercharged.”

Offenders may also be fined, jailed, or both.