Tuesday, November 14, 2006

What does 7% GST mean?

Well, it seems that the GST in Singapore is going to be raised to 7%. What does it mean?

Let's do a simple calculation. Assuming each month, a person spend SGD300 on food and SGD100 on public transport. So, in a year, he will spend SGD4800 - which I think most people would have spent more than that in a year for food and transportation.

So, for the first year, he would have paid SGD336 in GST.

Now, let's assume that this money were to be invested in some mutual funds, say for an annual return of 6%, which I think is pretty conservative, for 10 years with the profit going back to investment. As a comparison, Warren Buffett is getting average 24.7% annual return from investment.

Over 10 years, this would have compounded to about SGD567.66. While the absolute figure is not big, it is a whopping 68.9% increase from the initial capital of SGD336!

And this is only based on 1 year's worth of GST. :)



Update #1: It seems that 6% ROI per annum is too low, in relation to the 7% GST that will be charged!

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