Total reliefs after the $80,000 cap.
Reliefs allowed (after cap)
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Total reliefs claimed
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Tax saved
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Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Relief | Amount |
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Why your reliefs have a hard ceiling
Singapore lets residents whittle down chargeable income with a long list of reliefs: earned income relief, your own CPF and MediSave contributions, voluntary CPF and SRS top-ups, child and parent and spouse reliefs, NSman relief, course fees, and more. Since the Year of Assessment 2018, IRAS has wrapped all of them inside a single overall ceiling of $80,000. You can claim as many individual reliefs as you qualify for, but the total that actually reduces your chargeable income stops at $80,000. This tool exists to answer one blunt question: have you already hit that wall, and if not, how much room is left.
It matters because reliefs only save tax to the extent they cut income that would otherwise be taxed. A relief that pushes your total past $80,000 is dead weight. It looks good on the form and changes nothing on the bill. People with high CPF contributions plus several family reliefs are the ones who quietly bump into this without noticing.
A taxpayer who overshoots the cap
Picture someone with $1,000 of earned income relief, $22,000 of CPF and MediSave relief, a full $15,300 SRS contribution, $30,000 of combined child and parent and spouse reliefs, and $20,000 of other reliefs such as NSman and course fees. That sums to $88,300, which is $8,300 above the ceiling. The calculator caps the allowed figure at $80,000 and applies their 15 percent marginal rate to that capped amount, not the raw total.
The $8,300 of reliefs above the line did nothing. The chart shows the total bar with the portion that counts shaded against the slice that fell off the edge.
Planning around the ceiling, year by year
The cap turns relief planning into a sequencing exercise. If your fixed reliefs, the CPF you cannot avoid plus your family reliefs, already approach $80,000, then a discretionary SRS top-up may save you nothing this year. The smarter move can be to time discretionary contributions for a year when your other reliefs are lower, or simply to accept that the SRS money still grows tax-free inside the account even if it earns no relief today. Remember too that Singapore has no capital gains tax and a one-tier dividend system, so reliefs are your main domestic tool for lowering an income tax bill; there is no separate investment-tax angle to optimise.
A common error is double-counting. Your mandatory CPF relief and a voluntary CPF top-up both sit under the same ceiling, as does SRS, so stacking all three can blow past $80,000 fast. Enter realistic figures here before December and you will know whether that final top-up buys anything.
Does the cap include my employer’s CPF contributions?
No. Employer CPF contributions are not part of your personal reliefs and do not count toward the $80,000 ceiling. Only your own qualifying contributions and the listed reliefs do. The cap is about reliefs you claim, not money your employer pays into your CPF on your behalf.
If I am already at the cap, is there any point topping up SRS?
For tax relief this year, no, because the extra relief is disallowed. But there can still be a reason: money inside SRS grows without a capital gains tax and only half of each withdrawal is taxed at retirement age. If you value the tax-sheltered growth and the eventual 50 percent exemption more than the relief, a top-up can still make sense. Just go in knowing the upfront deduction is lost.