Singapore

Republic of Singapore is an island country and a sovereign city state in Asia . The country consists of the main island of Singapore, Pulau Ujong and more than 60 small islands. The whole island is urbanized. Little of the original vegetation can be found there. The island has had couple different owners thought its past, the British gained sovereignty in 1919, after that the island was occupied by the Japanese during World war II, its quite a young country as in gained Independence only in the 1963.

Economy

The economy of Singapore is dependent on trade and manufacturing. Being in the top 5 of the worlds largest business ports and having the 3rd highest income per capital, its considered to be quite a rich country. Singapore also ranks as having the second highest freedom of economy in the world, falling right behind Hong-Kong. A large part of the economy also comes from the refinement of various goods. Such as the refinement of petroleum, chemicals. Also notable areas are electronics, mechanical engineering and bio medical sciences. The tourism sector may also be noted as more that 10 million tourists visit Singapore every year.

Tax

Singapore has over 10 free trade agreements with other countries and locations. There are different levels of tax for the three company types, available for registration.

Language

There are four official languages in Singapore. The most often used English and the rest are reffed to as the "Mother Tongue" and they are Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. The school system operates mostly in English, as the "Mother Tongue" subjects are not obligatory for all.

Incorporation

There are three types of companies registered most often. The first being resident company, second - nonresident, and the last is private limited. If your are at least a bit familiar with any of the company types, then you will know what are the application of the company. Such as the resident being used for purposes within Singapore, nonresident used for business conducted outside Singapore and Private Limited. The companies are incorporated based on The Companies act and The Income Tax act. The usual time for name registration in 3 to 5 business days. The name of company may be in any language as long as it uses Latin alphabet and are not a related to an undesirable subject to the government. Also suffixes to denote liability must be added.

Company upkeep

The annual fees are quite low in Singapore. For different types of companies there are different fees. The accounts must be prepared yearly, but the requirements to file audits, accounts and if the accounts are publicly available, depends on the type of the company and the type of the business the company is involved in. Annual return must be filed yearly for all types of companies.

Shares

The minimum number of shares for a private limited company is one. There are three types of shares available for this type of company:

• Ordinary shares
• Preference shares
• redeemable preference shares

Taxation

In order to speed up the growth of local companies in Singapore, all new companies are tax free for their first 100 000 USD of normally chargeable income. For the next 200 000 USD a further 50% exemption is given. Having some form of tax exemption for the first 300 000 USD of taxable income for new companies. After that the companies have to pay 17%  tax on corporate  income (usually taxable income).