Statistics on Total Employment and Trade Income of Top 1,000 Earners

Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance in each year over the past 10 years of income tax assessment, what is the (i) 25th percentile (ii) median and (iii) 75th percentile of Total Employment and Trade Income of the top 1,000 earners from all professions who are Singapore citizens.

The Second Minister for Finance (Ms Indranee Rajah) (for the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance): Mr Speaker, the top 1,000 earners refers to a specific subset of taxpayers and this group could change every year. As a lot of effort is required by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) to generate the full set of data requested, we have focused on the latest available data in the Year of Assessment (YA) 2023 and the data five and 10 years earlier, in 2019 and 2014. This will provide a broad sense of the income trends over the past decade.

For YA2023, the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile income of the top 1,000 earners who are Singapore Citizens are $2.4 million, $2.9 million and $4.5 million respectively. For YA2019, the corresponding figures are $2 million, $2.5 million and $3.6 million. For YA2014, the corresponding figures are $1.8 million, $2.2 million and $3 million.