Singapore tops Asia-Pacific's 'Good Governance' Index?

According to this report it does. The emphasis under the taxation category appears to be about whether there is transparency and efficiency in tax collection, and whether tax rates encourage international businesses to invest. Given Singapore's reputation as an uber MNC friendly country, this is no surprise. We really do roll out the red carpet for businesses to invest in Singapore - I imagine this starts from EDB and IE's combined efforts in attracting investment, and then followed through by coupling that with various incentives especially those that are tax-related. Equally important is the enforcement of tax collection and how user-friendly the system is. On both counts it appears from the rankings that Singapore is doing a comparatively fantastic job.

However, Singapore's system has its detractors. According to this other blog post, we are a tax haven. Their issue is not that Singapore has low taxes, but that it does not cooperate in exchanging information with other countries and is thus a 'secrecy jurisdiction'. One view on this would be that we are merely modelling ourselves after Switzerland in terms of developing the private wealth industry, and our secrecy is a reflection of our understanding that people wish to keep the state of their finances private and confidential, and thus by allowing that to happen, we are able to attract more funds than other more transparent jurisdictions. On the other hand, there is the view that our status as a tax haven is damaging to our public image and international standing, and will deter investors in the long-term if countries start to turn away from us and implement measures to discourage their companies to invest in Singapore i.e. politically there might be a loss of goodwill.

This juxtaposition clearly serves as an interesting perspective on the many different directions that a country's tax policy can take, and how those policies are being compared against those of other countries. In the end, whether they work seems to me to always be a matter of whose point of view we want to take, and what criteria we want to base our judgment on.