Paul's Fulfilling Life

This has been a hot topic this week since The Sunday Times came out with the article last Sunday that IRAS will be working with Grab & Uber to link the applications to IRAS in order to simplify the drivers’ need to input the gross fares less the call levy charged by Grab & Uber. Personally, I felt that the article had failed to address that, like taxi drivers who rent their vehicles from the taxi companies, most of the drivers had rented their vehicles from car rental companies. The rental is a deductible expense to the driver. The petrol used is also a tax deductible expense. The driver can also claim parking of the car, ERP charges incurred when the car is not ferrying any passengers and car wash expenses. The concept should be as the same for taxi drivers. For those drivers that use their own car, they can claim the commercial insurance for the car. A car for personal use only has personal car insurance, but commercial cars are allowed to ferry passengers. This should not be...

S ome of you who known me for quite some time would have known that I was a Silent Hero Award winner in 2015, as my friend had nominated me for the award  for my contributions to the IRAS Volunteer E-Filing Exercise from 2005 to 2015 & my grassroots work . The organization who gave out the award, Hillview Civilians Sports Club had been looking to form an alumni for the past winners to guide the new winners as an inspiration. I thought this was a brilliant gesture by them as most of the past silent heroes will know what one another are doing and contribute or share ideas to make each hero’s idea better. Little did I expect to be asked to try to gather the group at the last minute for the Awards dinner and prepare a speech about what I have done in the 2 years after I have won the award. It was fortunate that I managed to gather 6 out of the 11 heroes in the WhatsApp Group Chat and the speech went well, despite the short time I was given to prepare for it and it is definitely my ...

I believe that I have shared this when some of my new friends, community service partners had asked me about why I am volunteering despite my physical disability. I have always received help since my school days, where the janitor would carry me to the toilet or classroom when I was in Primary 1. Fellow classmates would help me to buy food from the school canteen. In my polytechnic days, bus captains would wait for me if they see me approaching the bus stop and assist me when needed. These are some of the deeds that I received from such nice people even until today, although I must say that the level of graciousness have dropped over the years. I started volunteering in 2005, when I was working as a tax assistant in my previous company. The reason was the company had too little personal tax clients and I did not want to lose my personal tax knowledge. As the saying goes, if you have the skill, but if you did not use it, you will lose it. The opportunity came by when IRAS started the Vo...