In May this year, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat provided details on Wage Credit Scheme (WCS), which has since been distributed.

Over S$1 billion in WCS payouts was disbursed to more than 95,000 employers, according to the Ministry of Finance.

The scheme is meant to support companies that have invested in increasing productivity, and encourages employers to share those productivity gains with their employees, by co-funding wage increases.

Next round of payouts will be in Mar 2021

The next round of WCS payouts in March 2021 are for qualifying wage increases in 2020.

Employers do not need to apply for WCS payouts, and the payouts will be credited directly to employers’ registered bank accounts through PayNow Corporate or GIRO.

Eligible employers will automatically be notified by end March 2021 of the amount of WCS payouts to be received.

Employers who have not already done so are advised to set up a PayNow Corporate account or register for GIRO end-February to receive the payouts in March.

Eligible employers

To qualify for the upcoming tranche of the WCS payouts, employers must have fulfilled the following:

• Have given Singaporean employees who earned a gross monthly wage of up to S$5,000, a gross monthly wage increase of at least $50 in 2020, and/or have sustained the gross monthly wage increase (at least $50) previously given to employees in 2017, 2018 and/or 2019
• Have paid the employees’ mandatory CPF contributions on 2020 wages to the CPF Board by January 14, 2021

For more information on WCS, you may visit the IRAS website.

Totally unrelated but follow and listen to our podcast here

Top image via Kirill Petropavlov/Unsplash