How your plan projects income and tax

The official rule

How does Singapore tax a resident’s income?

Tax residents pay tax on a progressive scale. The first $20,000 of chargeable income is tax-free, and each band above it is taxed at a higher marginal rate, up to 24% above $1,000,000. These are the rates from the Year of Assessment 2024.

A non-resident’s employment income is taxed at a flat 15% or at the resident rates, whichever gives the higher tax.

Source: IRAS, individual income tax rates, checked 12 Oct 2026

Compulsory MediSave for the self-employed

A self-employed Singapore Citizen or Permanent Resident must contribute to MediSave once their net trade income is more than $6,000 a year. The rate depends on age and income. For net trade income earned in 2025, it runs from 4% to 10.5%, with a yearly cap of $7,104 below 35 up to $9,324 at 50 and above.

Source: IRAS, compulsory and voluntary MediSave contributions, checked 12 Oct 2026

How your plan models it

How does my salary grow in the plan?

Your income grows by your annual growth rate every year. In a year on your job switch or promotion cadence, it uses the usually larger job-switch/promotion growth rate instead, not stacked on top. Set the cadence to 0 and it never applies.

Growth stops once your income would pass your income ceiling, a monthly cap you set, and then stays there for the rest of the plan. Any gap year (a career break) sets your income to zero, wherever it falls.

Two things come out of that gross figure, in this order:

1. Your CPF employee contribution, if you’re a Singapore Citizen or PR with CPF switched on. Everyone else, including “Others” citizenship, keeps their gross income unchanged. See CPF for the rates and the wage ceiling.
2. Income tax, worked out on your gross total income (salary plus side income), not take-home pay. Your CPF contribution isn’t deducted for tax.

Tax is its own cash outflow, not netted against your pay. So “take-home pay” already excludes CPF, but not tax.

How are side income and self-employment handled?

Each side hustle has its own start age, end age, monthly income, growth rate and ceiling. Your plan prorates a start part way through the plan. It then adds every side hustle’s income to your total, taxed like any other income, with no CPF.

One-off sums such as an inheritance, a gift or a payout go in Ad hoc income, not side hustles. Each sum is added in full to your cash in the year of its date. It isn’t taxed, has no CPF and has no growth or inflation applied.

Ad hoc income also isn’t treated as income for anything linked to your income, like insurance cover or a goal set as a share of income.

Self-employed MediSave in your plan

If you’re self-employed, you make no employee CPF contributions. Once your net trade income (profit) is more than $6,000 for the year, your plan applies CPF Board’s compulsory MediSave schedule for self-employed people, scaled by age and income:

Net trade income of $6,000 or less owes nothing. Between $12,000 and $18,000, the contribution phases in: it is the amount at $12,000 plus four times the low rate on each dollar above $12,000, so it never drops as your income rises. Above $18,000 the higher rate applies to your whole net trade income, up to the yearly cap.

Your plan books the bill the following year, matching CPF Board’s arrears assessment. It’s a separate top-up, not part of the wage ceiling rules in CPF.

How does my plan work out income tax?

Singapore Citizens and PRs are taxed on the resident rates above, applied to your total income (salary plus side income), with no reliefs or deductions. “Others” citizenship pays the higher of a flat 15% of income or the resident rates, with no reliefs, so a high income pays more than 15%.

Your plan works out each year’s bill from the previous year’s income, because your tax is only known once that year is over. In practice:

• Your first plan year shows a small, prorated outflow: a share of what a full year would owe, scaled to the months left in it.
• Your second plan year carries the catch-up: the full bill for that first year, as if it ran all twelve months.
• From year three, every year’s tax is the full bill for what you earned the year before.

One result: your plan never taxes income earned in its very last year (the year you turn 100), since no later year is left to carry the bill.

Why is my first year smaller?

Your first projected year rarely covers all twelve months. It runs from your plan date to the end of that year, and your plan counts the plan date’s own month as still remaining, so a July plan date counts July to December, six months.

Every first-year figure (salary, side income, tax) scales down to match. From year two, every figure is a full year.

What can I change, and what is fixed?

Yours to set, per person and per side hustle:

• Starting monthly income, annual growth rate and the income ceiling
• Job switch or promotion frequency, and the growth rate it triggers
• Gap years
• Whether you contribute to CPF at all
• Every side hustle’s start and end age, monthly income, growth rate and ceiling
• Employment status (employee or self-employed)

Built into the calculator, not settings in the app:

• The resident income tax bands and rates, and the non-resident rule (the higher of 15% or the resident bands)
• The one-year tax timing lag described above
• The self-employed MediSave contribution schedule (minimum income, rates by age and income tier, and the yearly cap)