Monday, March 21, 2011

Sale of books by LKY

Dear Mr. Tan,
When we work for a company, whatever we create on company time is property of company.
LKY was speaking as MM and doing the interview with the reporters in his office / government premises. so the content should property of government and therefore public property.
Now, LKY is selling his book and making profit from it?
Is this ethical?
SV

REPLY
I recall that, in the past, the proceeds from the sale of books by LKY are donated to charity.
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4 comments:

Sobri said...

LKY does not need the money from the sales of the book. Thus it is noble of him to donate the proceeds to charity.

Perhaps he should go a bit further and make ammendments to the parts where `he stood corrected'. It would go a long way towards social cohesion amongst the different races.

March 21, 2011 10:09 AM
Spur said...

If the work produced is using official hours and/or official equipment and premises, then any revenue or profits generated should belong to the organisation, and is not for the individual worker to donate to charity. The donation is from the organisation and thus the individual cannot claim 2.5X tax deductible for his income tax.

So far MSM reported $1.75M donated to charity from proceeds of the book. This means 2.5 X $1.75M = $4,375,000 tax deductible. At the 20% marginal tax rate, that is a income tax savings of $875,000.

In fact if the person has no other additional source of income to report, then $4.375M tax deductible is more than his official salary i.e. he will have zero chargeable income i.e. no need to pay income tax.

Of course, since the donated proceeds rightfully belong to an organisation, no individual can claim it as personal tax deductible, right?

March 21, 2011 2:40 PM
yujuan said...

There are too many books on him, so after the first book, have stopped buying.

March 21, 2011 4:34 PM
captaincaveman said...

whether lky donates the sales proceeds to charity or not should not be the issued here. The issue is should he be doing non-official work during his official working hours?

Assume that you are helping out on a fund raising project for your club and you spend your working hours doing all the related activities. See what will happen to your job!

March 22, 2011 2:51 PM

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