Singapore, it seems, doesn't tax capital gains.

[bluestate10]

44. The correlation.

Between Singapore not taxing capital gains and it's future is not as concrete as you imply. But first, let me clear up one misconception that you seem to have. The transaction that the Facebook bonehead was involved in does not fall under capital gains, it falls under earned income. The earned income is either delayed if the shares held have restrictions on them, or immediate if the shares have no restrictions attached. Typically, insiders in a company can sell only a small percentage of the shares that are allocated to them before an initial public offering. Saveriegn, or whatever the fuck his name is, is still holding most of his Facebook stock. Facebook will most likely not pay out dividends for many years, so the only route for an insider to make money is through stock sales when stock becomes unrestricted, or through special non-dividend distributions of cash. Any dividend, or non-dividend cash distribution is a capital gain and get taxed at capital gain rates. Any sale of stock is non-dividend investment income and is taxed at the applicable income tax rate if some of the various loopholes that exist in the USA taxcode are not used to reduce the effective taxrate paid.

Back to my point on Singapore. Singapore is a gateway to Asia for a myriad amount of legal and illegal activity. The legal activity is subject to the taxrates that Singapore apply. The illegal activity most likely doesn't get taxed unless legal front companies are set up to launder money. But what the illegal activity does do is provide living money the people that are involved in those kinds of activities, thus blunting the impact on Singapore society of a moronic taxation policy relative to capital gains.