Sometimes I feel that in every budget year, businesses will try their best to avoid paying anything to the government, and think of weird reasons to get any kind of exemptions. One of the latest that I heard was about employee retention. Trust businesses to think that high rentals are linked to employee retention. They are in no way related.
Seriously... If you wish to treat the problem, you need to treat the root cause, and not put a band aid to it. High rentals have to do with shortage of supply, putting ownership of units into a selected few that raised prices as and when they feel like it. What has employee retention have to do with it? You can retain the employee but it will not help your high rental. Totally unrelated.
The help required would be more on the way land sales are done currently, especially for office or retail shops. You want lower prices? Time to restrict block purchases of units. Only allow an individual to buy one unit out of the whole block, which I believe is also known as strata title units. This will put the ownership of the shop directly to the individuals. Singapore is so small and research has shown that Singaporeans are willing to travel, if the quality is good and value is there.
Treat the root cause, and not ask for exemptions just because it exists.
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