Husband and wife live-streamers peddling branded goods on FB fined total of $849k for GST evasion
Update on Oct 20:
Couple who evaded GST say sorry in emotional livestream, family helped 'settle' their $849k fine
Original article:
A married Singaporean couple were fined a total of $849,000 on Oct 15 for fraudulent evasion of goods and services tax (GST) through suppressing values of the imported goods and omitting freight charges in the import declarations made to Singapore Customs.
Rayson Loo Sian Hao, 33, who is the manager of Vanity Closet, was fined $453,000 while his wife, Rochelle Wang Siew Ching, 34, who is the director, was fined $396,000.
Each pleaded guilty to 11 charges of fraudulent evasion of GST amounting to $67,810.
Another 13 charges of fraudulent evasion of GST amounting to about $24,105 and 25 charges of causing incorrect declarations to be made, by not including the freight charges amounting to about $4,172 in the import declarations, were taken into consideration during the sentencing.
Vanity Closet was set up as a retailer of fashion products and its main business involved conducting live-stream sales of branded goods from overseas retail outlets through its Facebook page.
Wang would source and promote branded goods via live-streaming while Loo would arrange to ship the goods to Singapore.
In January 2022, Singapore Customs conducted checks on Vanity Closet's shipments imported in 2021 and found discrepancies between the actual values of the goods and the values declared to Singapore Customs.
Investigations revealed that Wang, Loo and their employees would travel to the United States and the United Kingdom to visit retail outlets selling branded goods and conduct live-streaming on Vanity Closet's Facebook page.
At the end of the live-streaming session, they would purchase the goods ordered by their customers and ship them to Singapore via air. Loo would create invoices with values much lower than the actual values and submitted the false invoices to freight forwarders, who then declared the suppressed values to Singapore Customs.
This led to GST underpayments and even non-payment in cases where the declared values were less than $400.
Between August 2021 and January 2023, Vanity Closet imported 49 shipments into Singapore. Of these, 24 shipments had been declared with suppressed import values and did not include freight costs. For the remaining 25 shipments, the freight costs were omitted in the import values declared.
Any person who is in any way concerned in fraudulent evasion of, or attempt to fraudulently evade, any duty or GST shall be guilty of an offence and will be liable on conviction to a fine of up to 20 times the amount of duty and GST evaded and/or imprisonment for up to two years.
Any person who makes any declaration which is untrue, incorrect or incomplete will be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10,000, or the equivalent of the amount of the customs duty, excise duty or tax payable, whichever is the greater amount, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or both.
