新加坡海关加大逃税惩罚力度，最高罚款增加到10000新币

The first set of amendments seeks to improve the effectiveness of Singapore Customs’ regulatory and enforcement operations. The second will introduce new offence provisions and enhance the penalties for specified offences. These amendments will enable Singapore Customs to more effectively carry out its mandate of trade facilitation and revenue protection and ensure that bad actors are deterred from committing offences under the Customs Act.

Mr Speaker, the first set of amendments will grant additional powers to Singapore Customs to improve their operational effectiveness. First, we will give the Director-General of Singapore Customs the power to authorise auxiliary police officers, or APOs, to exercise powers of search, arrest and seizure.

Today, only officers who are directly employed by Singapore Customs can exercise these powers. However, Singapore Customs also engages APOs to support its enforcement operations, and APOs will need to be granted these powers to perform their duties effectively.

And this is in line with the practice in other public agencies, such as the Health Sciences Authority, the Land Transport Authority, and the National Environment Agency, who are able to appoint APOs as authorised officers under their respective legislation to exercise similar powers.

Second, we will grant Singapore Customs the legal power to require licensees to remove all dutiable goods from licensed warehouses before the expiry or withdrawal of their licences.

Today, the Licensed Warehouse scheme allows licensed companies to store imported dutiable goods in a designated premise known as a Licensed Warehouse, with duty and the Goods and Services Tax on these goods suspended. To qualify for this scheme, companies must meet requirements including having good compliance records and ensuring the security of the dutiable goods.

In the absence of any legislative lever today, Singapore Customs has no legal powers to compel these companies to remove their goods when the company’s license expires or is withdrawn. Hence, the amendment will make it a requirement for licensees to remove all dutiable goods from the warehouse even before the expiry or the withdrawal of their licence, failing which, Singapore Customs will have the legal powers to remove and dispose of all dutiable goods from the warehouse, and recover any costs incurred for the removal and disposal of these goods.

Third, we will provide officers of customs with the power to stop and conduct searches on the belongings of a person that is committing or is reasonably suspected to have committed an offence under the Customs Act.

Today, officers of customs can only exercise the power of search on persons under three narrowly prescribed conditions: one, when a person is arriving in Singapore; two, when a person is suspected to be in possession of a bribe; and three, when a person has been arrested for an offence under the Customs Act.

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