Importing goods? GST is already costing you.
Companies below the compulsory threshold often assume GST is a problem for later. If you import, it’s a problem now: import GST is charged at customs on every shipment, registered or not. Unregistered, that GST is simply a cost. Registered, it becomes input tax you claim back each quarter. Whether that swap pays depends on who your customers are.
In this article
What happens at the border
Goods entering Singapore attract GST on their value plus freight and insurance, collected before release. Your freight forwarder pays it and bills you. For a small unregistered importer that GST is real money leaving the business with no way back. Register voluntarily and the same GST becomes input tax: you claim it on your return, against the output GST you collect from customers. If the input exceeds the output, IRAS refunds the difference.
The customer test
This is the whole decision. Once registered, you must charge GST on your sales. If your customers are GST-registered businesses, they claim it back and your price is effectively unchanged to them — registration is close to free money. If your customers are consumers or small unregistered businesses, your price just went up by the GST rate, or your margin went down by it. For a B2C importer that can wipe out the benefit of reclaiming import GST entirely.
Mixed customer base? Then it’s arithmetic: import GST reclaimed versus margin lost on the unregistered share. Do it on real numbers from the last twelve months, not a guess.
What you commit to
Voluntary registration isn’t a trial. IRAS requires you to stay registered for a minimum period, keep proper GST records, file every quarter on time, and in many cases complete a GST course and provide a security deposit. Late or wrong returns attract penalties whether you registered voluntarily or not. If your books aren’t already clean enough to support a quarterly return, fix that first; registering is the easy part.
The schemes for bigger importers
For companies importing at scale, IRAS runs schemes that let approved businesses defer or suspend import GST rather than pay-and-reclaim. They come with turnover, compliance and record-keeping conditions that a start-up importer usually won’t meet yet, but they’re worth knowing about as a destination. Getting the basic registration and quarterly discipline right is what qualifies you for them later.
How to decide
Three questions. What share of your sales goes to GST-registered customers? How much import GST did you pay last year that you couldn’t claim? And are your records ready for a quarter-by-quarter filing rhythm? The first two are a spreadsheet; the third is honest self-assessment. We run this check for importers regularly, and the answer is "register" about as often as it’s "not yet" — which is exactly why it’s worth asking before you sign the form.
Want the maths done on your numbers?
Send us last year’s import bills and a rough split of your customers. We’ll tell you whether voluntary registration pays — and if it does, we handle the application and the quarterly returns.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Thresholds, rates, penalties and filing rules are set by ACRA, IRAS, MOM and the relevant legislation and change over time; we have deliberately left the figures out. Please verify the current position or talk to us before making decisions. Morphrix Solutions Pte. Ltd. (formerly AG Solutions).