Tax
What is Tax Relief?
An amount subtracted from your income before tax is worked out, which lowers your chargeable income and so your tax. Reliefs come from things like CPF top-ups, SRS, and child or parent support. All your personal reliefs combined are capped at $80,000 a year.
Common reliefs
Reliefs come from a range of life circumstances and savings: Earned Income Relief, your compulsory CPF contributions, CPF cash top-ups (up to $8,000 for yourself and $8,000 for family members), SRS contributions, and support for a spouse, children or parents — plus the Working Mother’s Child Relief. Each relief has its own qualifying conditions and dollar limit.
The $80,000 cap
All your personal reliefs combined are capped at $80,000 per Year of Assessment; reliefs beyond that don’t reduce your tax further. Because a relief saves tax at your marginal rate, the same $1,000 of relief is worth more to someone in the 15% band than to someone in the 7% band — so it pays to plan which reliefs to use before the year ends.