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Glossary · Tax & compliance

GST

noun Singapore consumption tax

GST (goods and services tax) is Singapore's broad-based consumption tax on most goods and services, administered by IRAS. A GST-registered business charges GST on its sales, claims back GST on its purchases, and files a periodic GST F5 return for the difference. Malaysia's nearest equivalent indirect tax is SST.

Why it matters

Why it decides your software

Once you register for GST, your accounting software has a real job: apply the correct rate, keep the records IRAS expects, and produce a clean GST F5 you can review before filing. Getting that wrong is expensive, so how well a tool handles GST is one of the criteria we weight most heavily in our accounting reviews.

GST is also now tied to e-invoicing. Under the GST InvoiceNow requirement, new voluntary registrants transmit invoice data to IRAS through the InvoiceNow network, so the questions "does this file GST" and "is this InvoiceNow-ready" increasingly go together. Every tool we score for GST is checked on both.

Go deeper

Where this shows up on the site

Review

Xero review: the accounting app to beat for GST and InvoiceNow

See how a tool handles a real GST F5 return, or compare the field in our accounting roundup.

Read the Xero review