Taxpayers get PayNow QR as payment option in DBS-Iras tie-up

TAXPAYERS can now pay their taxes using PayNow Quick Response (QR) as an option on the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore's (Iras) myTax portal for all major tax types.

Tax types include individual income tax, corporate income tax, property tax, and goods and services tax.

These tax types comprise more than 80 per cent of Iras's total tax collections with a taxpayer base of more than three million individuals and businesses, Iras and DBS said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The new payment option comes on the back of Iras's collaboration with DBS to integrate application programming interfaces into the tax authority's operating framework to digitalise payments.

To pay by PayNow QR, taxpayers can use their SingPass/CorpPass to log into the myTax portal, scan the PayNow QR code with any of the digital banking mobile apps from participating PayNow banks and complete the payment in real-time. These banks are DBS, POSB, Bank of China, HSBC, Maybank, Citi, ICBC, OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and United Overseas Bank.

On top of the scan-and-pay function, taxpayers will also have access to instant settlement and real-time status updates of their outstanding tax balance.

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Raof Latiff, DBS Bank group head of digital, institutional banking, said: "The Quick Response (QR) code has become increasingly ubiquitous and we look forward to supporting Iras in continued efforts to enhance their customer payment journey and drive broader adoption of QR payments locally."

Ang Sor Tjing, director of Iras's revenue and payment management branch, said: "By partnering banks to push out different digital payment methods, Iras hopes to offer taxpayers a wider variety of payment options so as to cater to each taxpayer's unique needs, preferences and circumstances, and as such encourage prompt tax payment."

Iras and DBS have been working together over the last two years to digitalise payments across the former's various tax types. In March 2019, Iras introduced PayNow as an option for businesses to receive Wage Credit Scheme payouts.

For the next phase, both parties are collaborating to introduce PayNow QR for stamp duty payments in 2021.