Jamus Lim Challenges Claim on Middle-Class Tax Burden, Highlights Hidden Costs and Trade-offs

SINGAPORE: In a Facebook post on Monday morning (Feb 27), Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim (Sengkang GRC) appeared to question Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s claim about middle-class Singaporeans facing a lower tax burden than in other countries.

DPM Wong, also the Finance Minister, said during the Budget rollout on Feb 14 that the quality of public service Singaporeans enjoy is much higher than elsewhere.

Assoc Prof Lim acknowledged that there’s a certain truth to this but asked, “Why then do our middle classes feel so aggrieved and embattled? Are we spoiled complainers, ungrateful for how good we have going? Or is there something about our lived experience that speaks to a greater truth?”

He then began to outline the trade-offs to lower taxes and good public service, including having bigger class sizes in schools and parents paying for private tuition, long waiting times in public hospitals, and the social security system cutting families off at low-income levels.

“There isn’t any magic when it comes to public services. If we want to pay less on taxes, we’ll either have to accept lower quality, or less coverage, or longer waits. Some of it may be offset by high efficiency, but such gains can only go so far. Or we pay, through other means,” he wrote.

There are also other fees—“both real and hidden”—such as those charged for road usage and car ownership and rising land costs in public housing.

Assoc Prof Lim argued that these can be more burdensome for those with fewer resources in society, even the middle classes, and put Singaporeans under “a constant state of pressure.”

He added, “We are constantly being ‘tested’ on our choices, and expend cognitive energy figuring out whether we want to drive/park at this time or not, to choose this health plan or that, or which subjects merit extra tuition.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be mindful about how we spend our money. All I’m saying is that, truly, there isn’t any free lunch. We can’t really claim that we’ve a low tax burden—see!—so we must be well off, when we’re also being squeezed in so many other ways.”

He wrote that Singapore will have to choose between “a low-tax regime where we pay more indirectly (and maybe complain a lot about charges), or a higher-tax one (which we’ll inevitably complain about), where government can direct spending in even more progressive ways.”

Assoc Prof Lim ended his post by writing that the most important thing is “to be clear-eyed about the realities of what tradeoffs are being made so that we can be more informed when we engage in public policy debates. #makingyourvotecount” /TISG

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