GST invoice requirements in Singapore

A GST invoice in Singapore must show your GST registration number, the customer's details, an itemised list of what you supplied, and the GST shown separately with its rate — currently 9%, with 9% as the usual rate for most services.

What goes on the document

On top of the universal fields — invoice number, dates, both parties, line items and total — Singapore expects:

• Your GST registration number (formatted like M2-1234567-8)
• The GST rate applied to each line
• The GST amount, shown separately from the net
• The total payable including GST

The Singapore rule that catches people out

Registration is compulsory above an annual turnover threshold, and voluntary below it. A registered business must show its GST registration number and the GST amount separately on every tax invoice.

Rates

9%. Most service work sits at 9%. The rate rose to 9% in January 2024, after a staged increase from 7%.

Rates change. Checked to mid-2026 and a starting point, not tax advice. The current source is IRAS — and if you are near a registration threshold, twenty minutes with an accountant beats a search engine.

When you have to register for GST in Singapore

S$1 million of taxable turnover on a retrospective or prospective basis. Voluntary registration below that is possible but comes with a two-year minimum commitment and a requirement to complete an e-learning course.

Most systems test this on a rolling twelve months rather than your financial year — which is where the expensive mistakes happen.

Which GST rate applies to what

No reduced band. Supplies are 9%, zero-rated (exports, international services) or exempt (most financial services, the sale and lease of residential property, investment precious metals).

The transitional-rate problem

The rate went 7% to 8% in January 2023 and 8% to 9% in January 2024. Any invoice straddling a change needs care: the rate depends on when the supply took place, when the invoice was issued and when payment was received, and the rules pick between them in a defined order. If you invoice in December for work delivered in January, check before assuming.

Customer accounting for prescribed goods

For local sales of certain prescribed goods — mobile phones, memory cards, off-the-shelf software — above S$10,000 to a GST-registered customer, the customer accounts for the GST rather than you. The measure exists to counter missing-trader fraud and catches legitimate resellers who have never heard of it.

Tax on a discounted invoice

One that gets miscalculated constantly: when you show a discount on the invoice, GST is charged on the discounted amount, not the list price. Bill S$4,100, discount 5%, and the taxable value is S$3,895 — not S$4,100. At 9% that is S$350.55 of GST, not S$369. Getting this backwards means you collect more tax than you owe and hand it over, out of your own margin — on every invoice you issue until someone notices.

Invoicing a customer outside Singapore

International services are zero-rated under specific statutory categories rather than as a general principle — the category has to fit. Overseas vendors supplying digital services to Singapore consumers register under a separate overseas vendor regime.

Charging tax to a client in another country sets out the general shape; the first time it comes up it is worth an hour with an accountant.

Record keeping in Singapore

Five years from the end of the relevant accounting period. Retention rules mean the document, not a row in a ledger.

Set your country once in EstimateBill and the tax is labelled correctly on every invoice after that — GST and GSTIN in India, VAT in the UK, Sales Tax and EIN in the US, across 58 countries.