Compare Income (part 2)

You can consider this as the "feel good" version of our salary comparison calculator.

A reader requested that the comparison calculations include people who aren't required to pay taxes. Specifically, these are people whose annual income is $20,000 and below.

According to the Iras report, 691,441 Singapore residents were in the "non-taxable" group. This means that more than 48% of all the 1,436,512 assessed residents are not required to pay income tax for YA2006.

I had earlier excluded them not because they are "in a different league". The main reason is that I believe this group contains not only people who are gainfully employed, but also people who are between jobs and people who are transiting from employment to voluntary unemployment (e.g. homemakers), among others.

Anyway, I had thought it's always better to have the benchmarks higher than lower.

But I changed my mind.

The chart below shows the gap between the income percentiles when we include the non-taxable and when we exclude them. As you can see, in order to be at the 90th-percentile (i.e. beating 90% of the people), you need to make about $150k when you previously compare only with the taxable group, but now you just need $90k when you include the non-taxable.

Isn't statistics fun?



And here's the "feel good" version of the income comparison calculator:



http://www.salary.sg/2007/compare-income-part-2/

Actually I am just interested in income distribution of S'poreans who work. I am of the impression that the income gap is getting wider.

at82, the gap is widening. I don't think anyone disputes that.