SINGAPORE: The managing partner of an email marketing firm has been fined the maximum S$10,000 for submitting false information in order to obtain a Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) cash payout.
Neo Leong Kiat, 38, was also ordered by the court on Wednesday (Aug 26) to pay a penalty of S$18,000 — three times the amount of the cash payout that would have been wrongfully obtained.
Neo is the managing partner of Mailcarp, an email marketing and software consultancy.
In April 2013, he submitted a claim PIC cash payout for the purchase of automation equipment. In his application form, he listed the details of three local employees.
One of the conditions for obtaining a PIC cash payout is that a firm must have three local employees. Investigations by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) found that two of the three local employees listed by Neo in the application form did not in fact work for Mailcarp.
To make his claim appear legitimate, Neo had made Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions to two individuals a day before the date of the cash-payout application, so it would look like they were among Mailcarp’s local employees.
IRAS found that the two did not work for Mailcarp and had not been paid any salary.
The authority has reportedly taken action against 245 fraudulent claims under the PIC scheme, which was introduced in 2010 to help companies in efforts to improve productivity. The amount of monies clawed back — or not paid out — from these claims totalled about S$10 million as of May 31, including penalties and fines.
Last August, digital-printing firm Media Grafix, which was convicted of abusing the PIC scheme to illegally obtain a higher cash payout, was ordered to pay a fine of S$5,000 and a penalty of S$48,704. The company had inflated its claims using a fake tax invoice.
In February that year, a director of Exel Mitsui Technologies was fined and sentenced to five weeks’ jail for the same offence.
IRAS reiterated that it takes a serious view of any attempt by claimants, vendors or consultants to defraud the Government. In Neo’s case, the penalty is three times the amount of cash payout that was claimed, and a maximum fine of S$10,000 or up to three years’ jail or both.
Those convicted of abusing the PIC scheme will have to pay a penalty of up to four times the amount of cash payout fraudulently obtained, and a fine of up to S$50,000 or be jailed up to five years, or both.
Those who wish to report malpractices or potential abuses of the scheme can write to IRAS at ifd@iras.gov.sg.
Read the original TODAY report here.
- TODAY/cy