Dr Christine Cheng

There's a rather famous phrase: Singapore is a FINE city. Renowned worldwide for having many laws, particularly fines for littering, chewing gum, jay walking. I even had someone in London tell me that Singapore's banned Coca Cola!

All jokes aside, being a civilian in Singapore is not difficult. As long as you know the myriad rules and stick by them, you're fine. There are so many benefits to living in this city, that minor inconveniences like looking for a dustbin rather than dropping rubbish at will is really not a problem. Especially when the resultant effectis a clean city.

But running a business in Singapore. Now that's a totally different story. I have been self employed for over 6 years now. My first company was a sole proprietorship for private anaesthesia services. Keeping my accounts organised and finding a good accountant was the hardest part of the whole thing. This was converted to a Private Limited company in 2006.

The other two companies were a different story. With bricks & mortar, staff and other overheads, the stress levels were of a different league. Now we had to look at regulations in great detail, making sure we kept to them even if our colleagues did not comply.

Working in Aesthetics in Singapore has certainly been "exciting". I love the new innovations and advances, but the  many changes in regulation has meant services suddenly terminated, stocks wasted. I dread to think how much money has been wasted in this way.

Dealing with the various government bodies has been the most trying. This includes trying to get work passes (appeal after appeal, after appeal... then the staff resigns after a few months), the tedious licensing procedures, IR21 forms for foreign staff who take their time to give me the information IRAS requires, etc.

It's all painful even if the process goes to plan. But when they don't, the business is the first to be penalised. A recent example is the Australian nurse who walked out without notice. Her resignation was planned for end February. She walked out after her January salary was encashed. Now IRAS is hounding us for her income tax, which we were to pay out of her witheld February salary.

An older incident was where we overpaid CPF to a terminated member of staff. She had the employee's contribution refunded to her, then ignored the letters from CPF board, so has kept the contribution, plus the refund. We can't do a thing, and the police aren't interested at all, despite 3 reports about other far more serious matters being made already.

I was discussing this with a patient this afternoon. She's the HR manager of an MNC, and she's faced similar problems before. Employers aren't allowed to withold salary on the off chance that the workers can scarper off and we're just forced to take over the responsibilities. It's extremely frustrating.

So tomorrow, I have to contact IRAS and try to explain the situation to them. I hope they'll do the right thing and look for the individual who really owes the tax, not me. What's the chances of justice prevailing in Singapore??? Or will we be fined for not paying up on time...