The system and the 2020 turning point

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Singapore's goods and services tax is a value added tax charged under the Goods and Services Tax Act 1993 on supplies of goods and services made in Singapore by a taxable person in the course of business and on imports. The standard rate rose from 7 to 8 per cent on 1 January 2023 and to 9 per cent on 1 January 2024.¹ Registration is compulsory once taxable turnover exceeds S$ 1 million in a calendar year or is expected to exceed it in the next twelve months, with voluntary registration available below that threshold.² Switzerland's VAT works on the same principles with a standard rate of 8.1 per cent since 1 January 2024 and a registration threshold of CHF 100,000 of worldwide turnover (see Part G, Chapter V). A Swiss reader will find the architecture familiar and the detail different.

Until the end of 2019 the supply of a cryptocurrency was treated in Singapore as a supply of services. A person who sold Bitcoin for Singapore dollars made a taxable supply, while a person who paid for a coffee in Bitcoin made two supplies, one of the coffee and one of the Bitcoin. The result was double taxation of every use of a token as payment and a compliance burden that no other means of exchange carried. IRAS consulted in 2019 and changed the rule with effect from 1 January 2020. From that date the supply of a digital payment token is exempt when made in exchange for fiat currency or another digital payment token, and the use of a digital payment token as payment is disregarded as a supply.³ The change aligned Singapore with the European Court of Justice's decision in Hedqvist and with the Swiss practice that treats the exchange of payment tokens as an exempt turnover in the financial sector.⁴

Notes

1. Goods and Services Tax Act 1993 (2020 Rev. Ed.), ss. 8 and 16; Goods and Services Tax (Amendment) Act 2022 (rate increase in two steps). ↩
2. Goods and Services Tax Act 1993, First Schedule, paras 1 and 9 (compulsory and voluntary registration). ↩
3. IRAS, e-Tax Guide GST: Digital Payment Tokens, third edition, 30 January 2026 (first edition 19 November 2019, second edition 3 August 2022), paras 6.4 and 6.5 (exchange and loans of DPTs exempt) and section on use of DPTs as payment (disregarded supply). ↩
4. Court of Justice of the European Union, Skatteverket v David Hedqvist, Case C-264/14, judgment of 22 October 2015. For Switzerland see FTA, MWST-Info 04 and the FTA practice statement on cryptocurrencies, discussed in Part G, Chapter V. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.