18 January 2012

In the parliamentary sitting on 16 January 2012, the Minister of State for Finance, Ms Josephine Teo was queried about the rationale of the parental relief being restricted to only one child, whether the scope of the relief should be extended, and the impact on overall revenue if the scope of relief was extended to all children.

Currently parental relief is a fixed dollar amount for each parent claimable by only one child.

The Ministry has responded that:

• Extending the fixed dollar relief to more children will have implementation issues as it is often difficult to quantify the amount of support given.
• In the year of assessment 2010, about 151,000 taxpayers claimed a total of S$1.16 billion of parent relief, costing the Singapore Government about S$106.4 million in tax revenue foregone.
• There will be minimal tax revenue impact if the proposal is to share the current quantum of parent relief among all children.
• The revenue impact, however will be significant if every child or grandchild can each claim the full amount of relief for supporting his or her parent or grandparent.
• They will study this idea further and engage in consultations to see if it can be implemented practically.

Source: Ministry of Finance