Tax burden on poor
For a poor man earning $2000, he is not going to be able to retire and withdraw anything meaningfully from CPF due to minimum sum requirement and inflation. Just as the some economist view social security contribution as taxation, we assume that CPF is a form of tax.
Due to high cost of living, the poor man would be living hand to mouth every month, having zero savings. Hence, all his remaining income is subject to 7% GST. Together with CPF contribution rate of more than 30%, the poor pays around 40% of tax.
Shifting tax burden to the poor
PAP has all these while been giving their own class of people tax cut goodies by providing excuses that the tax cut help to develop financial center and spurs the relocation of high net worth individuals.
Therefore, taxes on dividends are cut to 0 together with other cuts that benefit only the rich. Meanwhile, to compensate lost of tax revenue, PAP make the poor pay by introducing the regressive GST and hiking it to 7%.
Alternative tax system
The GST is a regressive tyranny that we should do away with. The lost of tax revenue in earlier cut can be fully compensated by implementing landed property tax. Since foreigner is restricted from buying landed property, such tax will claw back earlier tax cut to the local rich elite.
And since landed property tax only hit elite citizen owning landed property, it will not affect the development of financial center. It will not have no impact on any high net worth foreigner wanting to migrate here, so long if they do not buy landed property. Unfortunately, nothing is going to stop our elite from ducking tax burden and dump it to the poor Joe.