As part of the Singapore’s drive to adopt digital contact-free payments, DBS Bank has been collaborating with government agencies such as the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) to integrate APIs (application programming interface) into the tax authority’s operating framework to digitalise payments.

IRAS now offers PayNow QR as a payment option on its myTax portal for all major tax types, including Individual Income Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Property Tax and Goods and Services Tax, to provide greater convenience for both individual and corporate taxpayers. Currently, these tax types comprise more than 80% of IRAS’ total tax collections, with a taxpayer base of more than three million individuals and businesses.

To pay by PayNow QR, taxpayers use their SingPass/CorpPass to log into IRAS’ myTax portal, scan the PayNow QR code with any of the digital banking mobile apps from the nine participating PayNow banks, and complete the payment in real-time. Apart from the convenience of the scan and pay function via IRAS’ myTax portal, taxpayers can also benefit from instant settlement and real-time status updates of their outstanding tax balance.

DBS and IRAS have been working together over the last two years to digitalise payments across the tax authority’s various tax types. With the support of DBS, IRAS first introduced PayNow as an option for businesses to receive Wage Credit Scheme (WCS) payouts in March 2019. Before the implementation of PayNow, about half of WCS-eligible businesses, many of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), received their payouts via cheques. For the next phase, both parties are collaborating to introduce PayNow QR for stamp duty payments in 2021.

DBS Media