Remember my post one and a half years ago about my friend making a claim against his employer and how difficult it was? Basically, a PMET with monthly basic salary of more than S$4,500 is not covered under the Singapore Employment Act and I was questioning the purpose of having a salary cap. In March 2018, amendments to the Singapore Employment Act have been proposed that will finally bring about positive changes to the state of labour protection here.

It’s not a secret that Singapore has one of the worst developed country labour protection laws. The labour market is weighted heavily to the benefit of employers and this comes at the detriment of employees. Key proposed changes to the Singapore Employment Act that will help to change this include:

• Removing the monthly salary cap of S$4,500 for an employee to be afforded protection under the Act; and
• Wrongful dismissal claims will soon be heard by the Employment Claims Tribunal instead of the Ministry of Manpower.

This is a step in the right direction and should come into effect by 1 April 2019. The problem with this is that it took the Singapore Government such a long time to realise the need for such changes and it’s still going to take a while more to implement them. Let’s not even go into further labour protection needed for vulnerable employees such as people with disabilities and women with caregiving responsibilities. It would be nice to see some level of urgency on this.

Anyway, the announcements came at an interesting time (more than a week ago). Main reason was that my wife got screwed in her contract negotiations and her employer didn’t backdate her higher salary for the past month despite her already doing the work. Essentially, my wife lost out on a month’s worth of higher pay and the main reason given by her employer is that the backdating can’t be done because of procedural issues.

It may not seem like much but it speaks volumes about how little recourse an employee can have when he/she gets screwed by the employer. This can happen to varying degrees and I can only imagine how much worse it can be if this is a more errant employer. Given the opportunity, the employer will almost always take advantage of the employee, especially when it knows there’s not much the employee can do. It is a function of human nature and the human condition. That’s why there are so many personal stories about employees being underpaid, discriminated against, etc.

Apparently as a Singapore citizen, my wife’s contract negotiations was already given priority but it still resulted in a failed outcome i.e. financial penalty in the form of lost wages. What would have happened if she was a Singapore PR or foreigner? My wife is lucky that her financial position allows her to absorb this financial cost and move on from this negative experience. But it definitely serves as a reminder that we can easily get screwed over in our jobs by our employers. Which is why the ability to move out of toxic work environments is so important and how personal finance management affords us that protection even if the law does not.

It’s time for Singapore Tax Season 2018 – filing of individual income tax returns for YA2018 i.e. assessment for income earned and expenses incurred from Jan 2017 to Dec 2017. I like how most of the information is pre-filled in our income tax returns and we only have to provide additional expenses/claims data. It’s a relatively smooth and painless process to complete and submit our YA2018 ITRs with IRAS.

Since we no longer have the personal tax rebate (YA2017) and received higher salary & bonus income, both of our YA2018 tax payable amounts have gone up. This is a good problem to have since that means our active income has increased. Nevertheless, it’s always going to hurt to pay more income tax. Which is why we go with the 12 interest-free monthly instalments via GIRO. It hurts less when you pay a smaller amount every month rather than a big lump sum at one time. Helps with your cashflow management.

For the calendar year 2018, our combined personal income tax monthly instalments will now be slightly above S$1,000. Sigh, it’s painful just writing this out but we understand the importance of taxes to nation building. Let’s hope the Singapore Government continues to use the tax revenue wisely. Anyway, more issues are starting to surface at my wife’s new role, which is making this a tough start to the new year.

Getting promoted may have its perks such as higher pay. But it also comes with more stress, responsibilities and pressure to perform. It’s a lesson in being careful for what you wish for. My wife got what she wanted out of the performance review for last year but it has been a challenge settling into her new role for the past few months. With my job scope expanding as well, I reckon this is going to be a difficult year for our careers. It would be an achievement to make it to the end of the year with our work-life balance intact but we shall strive to do so no matter how we busy we get.