By Gabriel Chen

SINGAPORE is the most business-friendly country in the world, according to a new survey of chartered accountants.

It came out on top in a poll of more than 1,000 members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales based in Asia, Europe, the United States and the Gulf.

The Global Enterprise survey covered three Asian locations - Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia - where 280 respondents were based.

Of these, 97 per cent of those located in Singapore rated their domestic environment as 'business-friendly', compared with 88 per cent in Hong Kong and 84 per cent in Malaysia.

Some 80 per cent of Singaporean respondents went a step further to say the country was 'very business-friendly', compared with 63 per cent in Hong Kong and just 9 per cent in Malaysia.

This was in sharp contrast to the view held by European businesses of their own regulatory and taxation environment.

About 54 per cent of British businesses and 43 per cent of companies based in the rest of the European Union are struggling with what they see as a business-unfriendly environment, the survey found.

Tax experts say Singapore is business-friendly despite its 17 per cent corporate tax rate being higher than Hong Kong's 16 per cent. Both, however, are low in relation to Malaysia's 25 per cent.

'The 1 per cent differential is largely meaningless,' said Deloitte tax partner Ajit Prabhu. 'Singapore offers a whole host of tax incentives for businesses and corporates, while Hong Kong has no such tax incentives at all.'

Mr Choo Eng Chuan, an international and corporate tax services partner at Ernst and Young, said individual income tax rates should also be considered and pointed out that Britain's top individual tax rate was recently raised from 40 to 50 per cent.

Mr Choo said: 'In business, it's a war for talent, and talent goes to where they can make a good living and good after-tax dollars.'

In Singapore, the top individual income tax rate is 20 per cent.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.