The tax is low, the rent is not, and there is no retirement visa. Here is what residency, tax and a passport really involve.
Living in Singapore takes a skilled job or serious money to qualify for at all. Once you are in, the tax is light and your foreign income is left alone. The rent is the catch, and it is a big one.
Living in Singapore is filtered from the start: there is no retirement visa, no digital-nomad visa, and no working remotely on a tourist entry. To live here you need a skilled job, a company to run, family here, or the wealth to put millions into the Global Investor Programme. That filter is the whole story. Clear it and you get a city that genuinely works, a tax system that leaves your foreign income alone, and a one-bedroom condo that rents for around SGD 3,500 to 5,000 a month.
Updated July 2026
How a country decides what it can tax you on. "Worldwide" means income you earn anywhere; "territorial" means only income earned inside the country; "remittance basis" means only the foreign income you actually bring into the country.
The profit you make when you sell something for more than you paid, like shares or property.
Whether you can keep your current passport after becoming a citizen here. "Conditional" means it is limited or not guaranteed: allowed only in certain cases, or tolerated in practice but not written into law.
Under the Common Reporting Standard, tax authorities in participating countries automatically share information about each other's residents' bank accounts.
| Annual taxable income | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to SGD 20K | 0% |
| SGD 20K to SGD 30K | 2% |
| SGD 30K to SGD 40K | 3.5% |
| SGD 40K to SGD 80K | 7% |
| SGD 80K to SGD 120K | 11.5% |
| SGD 120K to SGD 160K | 15% |
| SGD 160K to SGD 200K | 18% |
| SGD 200K to SGD 240K | 19% |
| SGD 240K to SGD 280K | 19.5% |
| SGD 280K to SGD 320K | 20% |
| SGD 320K to SGD 500K | 22% |
| SGD 500K to SGD 1M | 23% |
| Over SGD 1M | 24% |
The first SGD 20,000 is tax-free and the top 24% rate only starts above SGD 1,000,000. There is no state or municipal income tax on top. Non-residents pay a flat 24%.
Sources: tax · immigration
Singapore taxes residents on local income and leaves foreign income alone, so this estimates the tax on your Singapore earnings. The first SGD 20,000 is tax-free, and the rates climb gently from there.
Money you earn from work or business done inside Singapore. Income earned where you live is almost always taxable there, so it feeds the brackets in full.
Foreigners are taxed only on income earned inside Singapore, so money you earn abroad is not taxed here. Enter it if you like: you will see it does not add anything to the bill, however large it gets.
Left out of the tax: Singapore taxes foreigners only on income earned here, so this stays untaxed no matter the amount.
A rough guide only. It applies the resident rates to Singapore-source income and treats foreign income as exempt, which is the rule for individuals. It ignores personal reliefs (earned-income, spouse, child and others), CPF, and the trading-versus-investment test. Confirm your own numbers with a tax adviser.
Tax rates from PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries.
A deposit, an agent's fee and the first months of rent tend to fall due before your local account is open, and in Singapore those numbers are large. Getting money in at a good rate matters from the start.
On a deposit that size the gap between services is worth checking. Compare them on how much reaches the account in Singapore dollars rather than the rate on the quote, and our guide to money in Singapore goes deeper.
Day to day, Singapore feels almost frictionless: clean, safe, green for a city this dense, and everything from the trains to the hospitals just works. The number it cannot paper over is the cost of living, the highest in the region by a wide margin. Each score is out of 100 and compared with the other countries on RoamFX; tap the info icon on any row for the reasoning.
The same country can be easy for one kind of move and closed to another. Each score mixes the visa route and how that kind of income is taxed with cost of living, safety and the rest. Open "Why this score" for the reasoning.
Living on a pension, usually 50 or older.
Capped at 30: there is no practical visa for this, so the other scores cannot make up for it.
The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Retired early, living on dividends, interest and gains.
Capped at 30: there is no practical visa for this, so the other scores cannot make up for it.
Work out your FIRE number per country →The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Paid by clients or an employer in another country.
Capped at 30: there is no practical visa for this, so the other scores cannot make up for it.
The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Hired by a company in the country, on a work permit.
The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Singapore is a single city, so this is about neighborhoods, not towns. Where you land tends to track your budget and whether you have children, and a central two-bedroom costs somewhere between SGD 5,000 and 9,000 a month.
Central and priciest, from the malls on Orchard Road to the bars along Robertson Quay. The default for well-paid singles and couples who want to walk to work, at roughly SGD 6,000 to 9,000 for a two-bedroom.
Low-rise and green, and where the big international schools sit (Tanglin Trust, the UWC campus). Families cluster here for the short school run more than the nightlife.
Along the coast by East Coast Park, with the Peranakan shophouses and food of Joo Chiat Road. More space for the money than the center.
In the thick of it, a short walk to the office towers, with the bars and restaurants of Tanjong Pagar and Duxton Hill on the doorstep.
The one enclave where foreigners can buy a landed, waterfront home, on a resort island off the south coast. A world of its own, and priced like it.
The practical things people look up before a move.
MythSingapore taxes your worldwide income.
RealityNot for individuals. Foreign income you bring in is exempt, so the low-tax reputation is real. What catches people out is the cost of living.
MythAn Employment Pass or PR makes you a tax resident.
RealityNo. Tax residency turns on spending 183 days here in a year, not on which pass you hold.
MythForeigners cannot buy property.
RealityYou can buy a condo. You just pay a 60% additional stamp duty on top, which changes the sums a lot.
MythYou will need a car.
RealityYou very much will not. A permit to own one, the COE, costs well over SGD 100,000 by itself, and the MRT is fast and cheap.
MythA job offer means PR is a formality.
RealityIt is not. You can apply after a year or two on a pass, but the criteria are unpublished and approval is selective, and plenty of long-term pass holders are turned down.
Only through a handful of routes, and each has a bar to clear. There is no general residence permit and no way to move over just because you want to. We cover the detail in our Singapore visa guide; the usual ways in are:
Singapore has no retirement visa and no digital-nomad visa, and working remotely for an overseas employer on a tourist entry is not allowed. If you are retired, your realistic options are an employer-sponsored pass (which most retirees will not get), the Global Investor Programme (if you are wealthy enough), or a family pass sponsored by a Singaporean child.
Plenty of people love the idea of retiring to a safe, English-speaking, well-run city in Asia. Singapore is that city, and it offers no way to do it. Malaysia's MM2H programme next door is where people usually end up looking instead.
Most people start on a work pass, then apply for Permanent Residence once they have a track record here. Approval is far from automatic: the criteria are unpublished, and a strong CV and steady local income count for a lot. PR, once you have it, lets you change jobs freely, buy a resale HDB flat with a spouse, and stop worrying about pass renewals. You keep it with a Re-Entry Permit, usually valid five years and renewed on your ties and contribution; there is no fixed days-per-year rule, but weak local ties hurt at renewal.
Citizenship comes after that. You can apply once you have held PR for two years, though in practice most successful applicants have held it four to six years or more. Adults complete the Singapore Citizenship Journey, a set of online modules and a community component, rather than a written exam.
The catch sits at the top of the ladder: Singapore does not allow dual citizenship. Becoming a citizen means giving up the passport you already hold, which is why many long-term PRs stop at residency and never take the last step.
Singapore is light on personal tax, and the reason people move here for it. Resident rates are progressive from 0% to a top of 24%, and that 24% only bites above SGD 1,000,000 of income. There is no capital gains tax, so gains on shares, property and crypto are normally untaxed, and dividends reach you tax-free under the one-tier system. There is no wealth tax, and estate duty was abolished in 2008.
For foreign income the answer is better still. Singapore is effectively territorial for individuals. Foreign-source income received by a resident is exempt, with one narrow exception: income earned through a Singapore partnership. So a foreign salary, foreign dividends or a foreign pension brought into the country are generally not taxed here. Tax residency itself is a pure day count, 183 days of presence or work in a calendar year, and it does not turn on your pass. Below that you are taxed as a non-resident at a flat 24%.
Two caveats keep it honest. If the tax office decides you are trading rather than investing, those gains can be treated as ordinary income, and the same logic applies to frequent crypto trading. And Singapore takes part in the Common Reporting Standard, so your home tax authority and Singapore can exchange account information. The old Not Ordinarily Resident concession is gone, closed to new entrants, so do not plan around it.
Singapore is consistently one of the most expensive cities in the world, and housing is the line that hurts. Rents ran up hard between 2022 and 2024 and have stayed high. A one-bedroom condo in a central area costs about SGD 3,500 to 5,000 a month; a family-sized three-bedroom in Orchard or River Valley can clear SGD 10,000.
The rest follows from the rent. A hawker meal is still SGD 5 or 6 and the MRT is cheap, so a modest life is genuinely doable. Push past that and it bites: a beer in a bar is around SGD 15, a cocktail closer to SGD 25, international-school fees reach the tens of thousands a year, and owning a car is a six-figure decision before you have driven anywhere. Our guide to money in Singapore gets into the day-to-day numbers. The low tax rate is real, and for most people it does not come close to covering what the rent costs.
Almost everyone rents. Foreigners can buy a condo, but the 60% stamp duty (below) makes it a very large bet on staying, so renting is the default even for people who own homes elsewhere.
The rental market is formal and tightly regulated, so there is little of the scam risk you get elsewhere in the region. Agents must be licensed by the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA), tenancy agreements follow a standard template, and your deposit is held against a documented inventory rather than a landlord's goodwill. After the 2022 to 2024 run-up, rents have come off the peak, so modest negotiation is realistic again, often in the region of 3 to 5% on a fair asking price.
Leases are one or two years. The security deposit is one month's rent for each year of the lease, so two months on a two-year lease, paid with the first month up front. A clean handover gets it back within about two weeks. If an agent represents you, their fee is commonly around one month's rent on a one-year lease, and often waived on a two-year lease where the landlord's agent takes the commission. A whole condo or HDB flat is the family option; a single room in an HDB flat is how many singles keep the cost down.
Read the maintenance clauses before signing, because Singapore has its own conventions. Tenants are usually liable for minor repairs up to a set figure per item, typically SGD 150 to 250. The landlord covers anything above that, and quarterly air-conditioning servicing falls on the tenant too, at a few hundred dollars a year.
Buying is the harder call. You can buy a private condominium without government approval, but a foreigner pays an Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty of 60% on top of the standard duty, so on a SGD 2 million condo that is SGD 1.2 million in ABSD alone. US nationals, and nationals or PRs of a few countries with trade agreements, are treated as citizens and can skip the surcharge on a first home, so check your own status. A Singapore bank will lend a foreigner up to about 75% of the price on a first property, but with no access to CPF the whole down payment and every monthly repayment come out of cash. Landed houses need government approval and are mostly off-limits, the one exception being leasehold homes on Sentosa Cove; public HDB flats are closed to foreigners entirely.
The market is online and agent-led:
Bringing your life over is easy by regional standards. Used personal effects generally come in free of duty and GST within the relocation window, and sea-freight moves are routine. The one thing not to ship is a car: between the Certificate of Entitlement and the duties, owning a vehicle here is among the most expensive in the world, and almost everyone relies on the trains and buses instead.
Most families who move to Singapore use international schools, and not always by choice. Government schools give priority to citizens and permanent residents. A foreign child joining above Primary 1 has to sit an entrance exam, the AEIS, and a place is not guaranteed. Published primary fees run from about SGD 22,000 to SGD 50,000 a year. Middleton International and One World International sit at the affordable end. UWCSEA, Tanglin Trust, Stamford American and the Singapore American School are all near the top. Every published figure includes 9% GST.
Some things to keep in mind. A government place, if you get one, costs SGD 1,035 a month for a non-ASEAN foreign child, less than half the cheapest international school. One-time fees are high and none of them come back. Tanglin Trust charges SGD 10,000 across application, enrollment and a capital levy. The Singapore American School asks up to SGD 12,400 before the first day. UWCSEA adds a development levy every year on top of tuition.
Last checked on: August 2026
Last checked on: August 2026
Fees vary by school. See the schools and more living costs on the Singapore cost of living page.
For a skilled worker or someone with real capital, Singapore is close to the best-run place you could move to: safe, efficient, excellent on healthcare and schools, and light on tax. None of that is in doubt. The bill arrives as rent, and it is large enough that the tax savings rarely cover it.
Come with an employer or a business and the numbers add up. Come hoping to retire on a nomad budget and there is no door: no retirement visa, no nomad visa, and a one-bedroom that costs more than a whole house would in most of the region.
This guide is based on public information and is not legal, tax or immigration advice. Rules change, so always confirm anything important with a qualified professional.
Living in Singapore?
Get our guides before you go: the visa rules that keep changing, the tax traps, and what living somewhere costs.
Generally no. Singapore is effectively territorial for individuals: foreign-source income received by a resident is exempt, with the one narrow exception of income earned through a Singapore partnership. So a foreign salary, foreign dividends or a foreign pension brought in are normally untaxed here. Your home country may still tax you, so check both sides with an adviser.
No, to both. Singapore has no retirement visa and no digital-nomad visa, and working remotely for an overseas employer on a tourist entry is not allowed. Retirees generally need an employer-sponsored pass, the wealth-based Global Investor Programme, or a family pass sponsored by a Singaporean child.
When you are present or employed in Singapore for 183 days or more in a calendar year. It is a day count, not a matter of which pass you hold: an Employment Pass or PR does not by itself make you tax-resident, and below 183 days you are taxed as a non-resident at a flat 24%.
Yes, private condominiums, but foreigners pay a 60% Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty on top of the standard duty, which changes the math significantly. Landed houses need government approval and are mostly off-limits, apart from leasehold homes in Sentosa Cove. US nationals and a few others are treated as citizens for ABSD under trade agreements.
No. Singapore does not allow dual citizenship for adults. Becoming a citizen requires giving up your existing nationality, which is the main reason many long-term permanent residents never apply for citizenship.
