If you are a foreign professional considering a move to Singapore, or a multinational employer planning a Singapore posting, you will quickly come across three different work pass options that are often confused: the standard Employment Pass (EP), the Overseas Networks & Expertise Pass (ONE Pass), and the Personalised Employment Pass (PEP). All three allow [...]
Becoming a Singapore Permanent Resident (PR) is one of the most significant immigration milestones a foreign professional can achieve. PR status confers near-citizen rights to live, work, and own property in Singapore, while also positioning the holder for eventual citizenship if desired. Yet the application process is competitive, document-intensive, and often opaque — the Immigration [...]
Running payroll in Singapore looks simple on the surface — there is no employee income tax to withhold, no equivalent of pay-as-you-earn, and IRAS does not collect tax monthly. But Singapore has its own discipline: monthly Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions, monthly Skills Development Levy (SDL), monthly Foreign Worker Levy (FWL) where applicable, annual income [...]
Singapore has cemented itself as Asia's leading family office hub. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) reported that the number of single family offices in Singapore had crossed 2,000 by the end of 2024, with the trajectory continuing to climb through 2026 as more high-net-worth families and Asian principals consolidate their wealth-management activities here. Yet [...]
Until 2017, foreign companies that wanted to operate in Singapore had to choose between setting up a branch office, incorporating a fresh subsidiary, or running a representative office. None of these routes preserved the legal identity of the original entity — meaning contracts, intellectual property, regulatory licences, and operating history all stayed in the old [...]
If you are a foreign entrepreneur looking to start an innovative or venture-backed business in Singapore, the EntrePass is one of the few work pass routes available to you. Unlike the Employment Pass — which requires you to be sponsored by an existing employer — the EntrePass allows you to be the founder, the shareholder, [...]
When founders and investors negotiate a Singapore shareholders' agreement, two clauses tend to dominate the exit discussion: drag-along rights and tag-along rights. Of the two, drag-along is by far the more contentious — and the more powerful. A well-drafted drag-along clause can be the difference between a clean 100% sale of your company and a [...]
Singapore's family office boom over the past five years has been built on two letters of the Income Tax Act 1947: O and U. Section 13O and Section 13U are the two main fund tax exemption schemes that family offices use to shelter qualifying investment income from Singapore tax. They sound similar, and indeed share [...]
Receiving a Singapore PR rejection letter is gut-wrenching. You probably spent months gathering documents, paying taxes diligently, integrating into the local community — only to receive a one-paragraph notice from the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) saying your application was unsuccessful, with no reasons given. The good news: a rejection is not the end. Most [...]
If you have ever been part of a Singapore startup raising a Series A, sat across from a private equity buyer, or watched a founder try to push through a sale of the company against the wishes of a stubborn 5% holder — you have already seen drag-along rights at work. Drag-along rights are one [...]