Finance

Why China withholds more tax from the same salary by December

A ¥20,000 salary in China is withheld ¥318 in January and ¥1,060 from May. The tax is annual and the payslip is a running payment towards it. Here is how cumulative withholding works, and the job starts, job changes, bonuses and late deductions that leave a balance to settle in spring.

27 Sep 2026 · 8 min read

Finance

How much MPF comes out of your salary in Hong Kong

You and your employer each pay 5% of your relevant income, you pay nothing below HK$7,100 a month, and neither of you pays more than HK$1,500. But the floor is really HK$280 a day, so across a band of pay a weekly-paid worker is not required to contribute while a monthly-paid one on the same annual salary is.

27 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Finance

How to write the amount on a Hong Kong cheque in words

English or Chinese are both accepted, and whichever you write, the words beat the figures. Write HK$10,001 in Chinese and one character goes missing in almost every online converter, including ours until this week: we ran 29,877 amounts through four of them and every single error was the same dropped zero.

25 Sep 2026 · 9 min read

Finance

Following S$10,000 through a Singapore T-bill auction

A Singapore T-bill's headline rate looks directly comparable with a fixed deposit's. Following S$10,000 through the September 2026 auction shows how the price is really set, what the money earned, and why paying from the CPF Ordinary Account changed the result.

21 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Finance

The 916 on a gold chain means something different in Malaysia and Singapore

Malaysian regulations make the fineness stamp compulsory, fix 22 karat as 916 rather than 917, and force the receipt to separate metal from workmanship. Singapore requires neither stamp nor assay, and its precious-metals statute never mentions purity at all.

19 Sep 2026 · 7 min read

Finance

A Singapore credit report can come back with no score at all

Credit Bureau Singapore grades borrowers AA to HH — but five other grades carry no score, and two of them are adverse findings rather than a blank slate. An unsettled default is displayed indefinitely, and the thirty per cent utilisation rule imported from American advice does not exist here.

19 Sep 2026 · 8 min read

Finance

Thailand's VAT rate is legally 10%, and the 7% expires every year

The Revenue Code sets Thai VAT at 10% and always has. The 7% everyone pays lives in a royal decree with an expiry date — the current one runs to 30 September 2027 — and the story that the 1997 crisis caused the cut has it backwards.

18 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Finance

Philippine 13th month pay is a wage, and a Christmas bonus can count as it

Thirteenth month pay has been compulsory in the Philippines since 1975, but a December bonus worth at least a twelfth of basic salary satisfies the obligation — the rules define it as an equivalent. The ₱90,000 tax exemption is also shared with those other bonuses, not reserved for the thirteenth month.

18 Sep 2026 · 7 min read

Finance

Singapore's core inflation leaves out a third of the price index

MAS Core Inflation drops accommodation and private transport, which together carry 35.6% of the 2024-based CPI. Most of that accommodation weight is rent that home owners never pay, which is MAS's argument for leaving it out — and the gap between the two measures has run in both directions.

17 Sep 2026 · 5 min read

Finance

DeepSeek Hired Bankers. That Is Not the Same as Filing to List.

Four underwriters for a STAR Market float, a pre-IPO round near $74.5bn, and no prospectus. The reports do not agree on whether the listing lands this year or in 2027.

11 Sep 2026 · 5 min read