Couple behind Vanity Closet fined $849,000 for evading GST
Wang Siew Ching, 34, and her husband Rayson Loo Sian Hao, 33, on Oct 15 Oct were convicted and fined for evading Goods and Services Tax (GST) on imported goods.
Wang is the director of Vanity Closet while Loo is manager.
Vanity Closet was set up as a retailer of fashion products and its main business involved conducting livestream sales of branded goods from overseas retail outlets through its Facebook page.
Wang would source and promote branded goods via livestreaming while Loo would arrange to ship the goods to Singapore.
For evading GST by suppressing values of the imported goods and omitting freight charges in the import declarations made to Singapore Customs, Wang was fined $396,000 and Loo, $453,000.
They each pleaded guilty to 11 charges of fraudulent evasion of GST amounting to $67,810. Another 13 charges of fraudulent evasion of GST amounting to about $24,105 and 25 charges of causing incorrect declarations to be made, by not including the freight charges amounting to about $4,172 in the import declarations, were taken into consideration during the sentencing.
In January 2022, Customs conducted checks on Vanity Closet’s shipments imported in 2021 and found discrepancies between the actual values of the goods and the values declared to Customs.
Investigations revealed that Wang, Loo and their employees would travel to the United States and the United Kingdom to visit retail outlets
selling branded goods and conduct livestreaming on Vanity Closet’s Facebook page.
At the end of the livestream, they would purchase the goods ordered by their customers and ship them to Singapore via air.
Loo would create invoices with values much lower than the actual values and submitted the false invoices to freight forwarders, who then declared the suppressed values to Customs.
This led to GST underpayments and even non-payment in cases where the declared values were less than $400.
Between August 2021 and January 2023, Vanity Closet imported 49 shipments into Singapore.
Of these, 24 shipments were declared with suppressed import values and did not include freight costs.
For the remaining 25 shipments, the freight costs were omitted in the import values declared.
Members of public with information on smuggling activities or evasion of duty or GST can report it to Singapore Customs.
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