Insights
Published 16 September 2026 · GST rate and recovery guidelines as at September 2026.
Yes, GST at 9% is payable on a commercial purchase, and whether your company can claim it back depends on what the company does rather than on the property. An operating business already carrying on taxable activity generally recovers it as input tax; a vehicle set up purely to hold the asset usually does not begin claiming during construction. Both positions are guidelines and are subject to the rules set by IRAS.
GST is charged at 9% on the purchase price of a unit at Cecil Place. The point that catches buyers out is the timing: it is not a single payment at the end. The developer issues a tax invoice at each milestone of the Sale of Commercial Properties Act schedule, and the GST attaching to that milestone falls due with it. On a $10,500,000 unit, the GST across the whole purchase is $945,000, of which $189,000 arrives inside the first eight weeks alongside the opening 20%.
Banks do not finance GST. Whatever loan-to-value is agreed — the indicative ceilings are on the commercial loan page — the 9% on each instalment is funded by the buyer. This is why the cash needed to secure a unit is meaningfully more than the headline 20%, and why the commercial purchase calculator shows GST as its own line rather than folding it into the instalment.
Where the buyer is GST-registered and already carrying on taxable business activities, the general guideline is that the GST may be claimed as input tax as it is incurred through the construction period. In practice that means the cost is a timing question — money out at each instalment, recovered through the company’s returns — rather than a permanent cost. It is still a real cash-flow item, because the outlay precedes the recovery.
A newly incorporated company, or an investment-holding vehicle that is not yet carrying on taxable activity, sits differently. The general guideline is that claims would not usually begin during construction, and may instead start once the property reaches its Temporary Occupation Permit and taxable activity commences — letting the unit out, or operating the business from it. Registration is not automatic simply because a property has been bought. This is the case most often misjudged, and the consequence is felt in cash flow across the construction period rather than at the end.
Three questions settle most of it: what the buying entity actually does today, whether it is GST-registered, and when taxable activity will begin in relation to the unit. None of them can be answered from the outside, and the position for a specific structure is one for a tax adviser and ultimately for IRAS. What the site can do is show the cash profile clearly: the stamp duty and GST page sets the two entity cases side by side, and the purchase calculator reports the GST stage by stage against the duty and the loan drawdown.
Set against the rest of the entry cost, GST is the largest single line after the price itself — larger than the Buyer’s Stamp Duty of $494,600 on a $10,500,000 unit. It is also the one most sensitive to the structure you buy through, which is why it is worth resolving before the Option to Purchase rather than after. Indicative figures for current units are on the pricing page, and the Sales Concierge can set out the schedule for a specific unit at the sales gallery.