LET us call a spade a spade. With higher incomes among the wealthy, the six-figure tax reliefs claimable by high-income mothers from the Working Mother’s Child Relief (WMCR) has become a significant tax loophole that needed to be fixed in the 2016 Budget.

In the debate about whether the new S$80,000 personal relief income cap is fair for high-income working mothers, the focus should not be on the women alone, who deserve plaudits for their achievements. Rather, society should examine the family unit behind the high-income mother. Successful, well-educated, high-income women are more likely to meet and fall in love with well-educated, high-income men. This pattern of assortative mating – people marrying others like themselves – is getting more pronounced over time.

High-income families, with their six-figure tax reliefs, get to enjoy tens of thousands of dollars of extra tax savings compared to ordinary families every year. These monies were, in all likelihood, funnelled into enrichment activities for their already-privileged children: tuition to enter the Gifted Education Programme, extra sports and arts lessons to qualify them for Direct School Admission exercises into the Integrated Programmes at elite junior colleges. The savings would have been used to send children to overseas universities if they could not get into local ones.

The children were also likely helped along by an internship at a bulge-bracket investment bank or top-tier law firm, because mummy’s colleague or daddy’s golf buddy offered it to them. Fresh in the workforce, they meet and fall in love with other successful, well-educated young people. And if the happy couple wants to buy a place, daddy and mummy on both sides are all too happy to chip in for the District 9-10-11 condominium down payment.

The odds are already stacked in favour of the wealthy in terms of getting ahead in life. So it will be churlish for those earning S$150,000 and above a year – at least the 88th percentile of taxpayers based on 2014 tax data – to complain bitterly of unfairness. This is the income above which working mothers will be affected by the new tax relief cap. Those at the borderline have to pay a few hundred to a few thousand dollars more. At the other extreme, those with many children and earning S$300,000 and above (96th percentile and up) might see their tax bill increase by S$20,000.

Unfortunately, there are those who would argue against making Singapore’s tax system more progressive. Singapore’s baby drive is being harmed, they moan. Working mothers are being discriminated against. It is strange that people who have been arguing, for years, that tax breaks do not make a difference to whether women have children, are suddenly claiming the opposite. Lamentably, even those who are not affected directly by the tax relief cap are drawn into thinking they are somehow wronged, when the government is only trying to put a wrong situation right.

Parents would of course always want the best for their children. And for high-income households running tight on finances because of property and healthcare commitments, every cent counts. Households where the woman is the main breadwinner will also feel the pinch. But some perspective is surely needed, especially by individuals making a six-digit income a year.

Few Singaporeans will see that kind of money in their lifetimes. Paying a bit more tax will not hurt.

This article was first published on April 7, 2016.
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More than half of the around 7,000 auxiliary police officers (APOs), which include those from Aetos and Certis Cisco, are Singaporeans.

And no APOs who are Malaysians are deployed at Singapore’s land checkpoints.

This is a deliberate move by the Government, despite manpower challenges, Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam assured the House yesterday.

He was addressing concerns raised by Workers’ Party’s Ms Sylvia Lim (Aljunied GRC) on the supposedly large number of APO positions filled by Malaysians.

“One officer recently told me that the ratio allowed is five Malaysians to one Singaporean and I wonder if that is true,” she asked.

Ms Lim also questioned if there are guidelines available for the deployment of these officers, particularly at checkpoints.

“For example, at immigration checkpoints, are there Malaysians checking their fellow Malaysians and what are the risks?”

Only Singaporeans, Singapore permanent residents who are Malaysian citizens, or Malaysians are eligible to be an APO, Mr Shanmugam said. “We have deliberately maintained a Singaporean majority over the years and we will continue to do so,” .

These officers are deployed in a range of functions, including protecting sensitive installations and supporting police deployment at major events.

“They are used as a complement for police resources to allow the police to perform core functions like crime-fighting and countering terrorism,” he added.

But “we are conscious of the implications of hiring and deploying Malaysian APOs”.

When it comes to land checkpoints, he said, his ministry requires all APOs to be Singaporeans.

This article was first published on April 7, 2016.
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Churchill and Mao might have caused the rift between The Straits Times (ST) and its popular column contributor, Dr Lee Wee Ling.

Dr Lee revealed on her Facebook page yesterday the contentious part of her article, that mentioned the death commemorations of the two legendary world leaders, and which ST editors said were “irrelevant”, according to her.

She had produced her article in full earlier on Facebook on March 25 without making any comment.

The saga started when Dr Lee shocked readers when she announced on April 1 that she would stop writing for the English daily of Singapore Press Holdings, after many years in a “love hate” relationship with the newspaper.

The tipping point finally came in March when the editors refused to publish in full her article on why her father, former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, would have cringed at hero-worship by Singaporeans marking his first death anniversary with week-long events.

But she argued that the chunk that the editors wanted removed would have helped drive home her point that Mr Lee, who died in March last year (2015) would be unhappy if he were to be turned into a personality cult after his death. She had explained this in the context of how two foreign countries have remembered their late leaders.

In the disputable part, which contained more than a dozen sentences, Dr Lee highlighted the vastly different ways the two nearly-forgotten world leaders of the war and post-war eras, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain and Chairman Mao Zedong of China, were honoured after their deaths.

She wrote that the body of Chairman Mao, who died on Sept 9 in 1976, was embalmed and placed in a crystal sarcophagus. It was then housed in a memorial hall built as permanent tribute to him in Aug 1977.

The commemoration of Sir Winston Churchill’s death saw a different picture, Dr Lee pointed out.

“The anniversary of his funeral took place 50 years after the actual funeral on 30 January 1965…marked by scores of events, including a service and wreath laying at the Houses of Parliament, a memorial service at Westminster Abbey, and the rebroadcast by BBC Parliament of the original live coverage,” she wrote.

She recalled what the current Prime Minister David Cameron had said in his tribute to Churchill: “Half a century after his death, Winston Churchill’s legacy continues to inspire not only the nation whose liberty he saved, but the entire world. His words and his actions reverberate through our national life today.”

Dr Lee continued in her article: “Compare the actual time from death to the first commemoration, and the different activities involved in the commemoration for the two leaders above. Which one would Papa wish his commemoration to resemble. Also bear in mind, that unlike almost all leaders, Papa was dead set against a personality cult and any hint of cronyism.

“If he was forced to choose one form of commemoration, Papa would have objected less if the commemoration resembled that held for Winston Churchill. Do note that Churchill, unlike Papa, cherished glory and a place in the history of his country.

“Compare what Churchill’s commemoration which was conducted 50 years after his death with the activities that have been taking place in Singapore that will continue for an entire week. I think Papa would have objected if he were able to convey his view.”

Rushing to her defence, one of her Facebook fans insisted that the examples of Mao and Churchill were relevant to the point of her article.

“If such a big chunk is considered irrelevant by ST editor, it is definitely more than editing,” said Teo Lay Yan.

After Dr Lee accused ST editors of curbing her “freedom of speech” in her Facebook post on April 1, fans had urged her to continue writing by posting her articles on Facebook.

ST and a former associate editor, Janadas Devan, who had edited her writing, had countered her allegations, saying that the issue was not about freedom of expression but rather a case of editing to uphold journalistic standards.

ST issued a statement on its Forum page to explain why her demand that her latest article be published unedited was “simply not acceptable”.

It said: “All professional newspapers require their writers to work with an editor, who gives a range of inputs on grammar, language, taste, relevance, coherence, judgment and the law. This is not an issue of freedom of expression, but a matter of upholding standards. This applies to all columnists, including Dr Lee, who has often written about not expecting or accepting special treatment.”

Mr Devan, who had Facebook exchanges with Dr Lee, had said reading her unedited writings was like “sailing through a fog”.

But he had good things to say too: “The effort of turning her raw material into coherent articles – that’s what I remember most about editing Wei Ling. That effort was often worth it because she had something valuable to offer, as her many fans can attest.”

chenj@sph.com.sg

Series of events held as tribute to Lee Kuan Yew

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

The Straits Times, AsiaOne

A maid was forced to stand on one leg on a stool while holding another stool in her hand, a court heard yesterday.

The 33-year-old Indonesian, who goes by the name Fitriyah, said that while she maintained the stance for half an hour, her employer, Tay Wee Kiat, forced a small plastic bottle into her mouth.

Testifying in the trial of IT manager Tay and his wife, Chia Yun Ling, she claimed Tay forced the bizarre punishment onto her after wrongly accusing her of breaking an elephant statue.

“He pushed all of the bottle into my mouth until I felt pain,” said Ms Fitriyah, who had apologised and explained that the couple’s daughter had broken the statue. “I cried and told him: ‘Don’t do that to me.’ “

The February 2011 ordeal ended when the couple decided to go out.

Tay, 38, denies 12 charges in relation to offences against Ms Fitriyah, while Chia, 41, has claimed trial to two.

Two of Tay’s proceeded charges accuse him of offering to pay Ms Fitriyah her salary and sending her home, in return for not reporting his offence of voluntarily causing hurt to the police, and instructing her to lie to the police that he did not physically abuse the other maid, Myanmar national Moe Moe Than, 27.

Ms Fitriyah said she felt scared after the statue incident and wanted to change employers, but Chia would not let her.

She then took $50 from Chia’s wallet and told Tay what she had done so that she would be sent back home.

When the couple took her to the agency, Ms Fitriyah refused to leave the car. She changed her mind about going to the agency, afraid that the staff there would scold her and not help her.

She said Tay pulled her hand and she fell onto the pavement, causing her pain in the chest.

The couple then took her to Tay’s father’s house. “I was informed that if I were to go back, I had to sleep with a Bangladeshi to earn money to buy a ticket…,” she said in Bahasa Indonesia through an interpreter.

When she refused to stand on a stool again, Tay slapped her. She also testified that Tay had used a bundle of three canes tied together to hit her on the head “many times”.

He also hit her twice with a bamboo stick, she said.

Another alleged punishment involved the two maids being forced to pray 100 times before a Buddha statue for moving a piece of cloth that was covering it.

Ms Fitriyah, who now works for another employer, demonstrated how it was done in court. With her hands clasped in front of her chest, she said she had to bow, kneel and then get up.

She said Tay then told her and Ms Than to slap each other 10 times.

Ms Fitriyah said once, when Tay found out that his son’s swollen head was due to an accidental fall, he pulled her hair and took her to a room.

“Suddenly, he grabbed my chin hard and pushed me against the edge of the cupboard. My head hit the cupboard. He did it two times,” she said.

She also testified that whenever she was punished, Tay would not give her any food.

The hearing continues.

elena@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on April 7, 2016.
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