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MP Ong Teng Koon suggests "ABCD": Additional Buyer’s Car Duty By Linette Lim POSTED: 28 January 2016 at 9:00 PM UPDATED: 28 January 2016 at 9:59 PM SINGAPORE: A tax on a second, and subsequent passenger cars – similar to the Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty in the residential property market – can help improve the spread of car ownership in Singapore, said MP Ong Teng Koon in Parliament on Thursday (Jan 28). “Could we not consider here, an Additional Buyers’ Car Duty – ABCD – which could be set as a percentage of the prevailing COE price, for those who wish to buy a second, a third, or fourth car?” he asked. He added: “Perhaps a simple mechanism would be to step up the price of each COE. Property investors also face tighter restrictions on mortgages, so similar might be applied in the car loans market.” The MP for Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC said the idea is to use the proposed mechanisms to “price some second car buyers out of the COE market, thereby lowering the price and improving affordability for first-car households”. As of 2014, there are 536,000 passenger cars registered in Singapore, figures from the Land Transport Authority show. Of this, approximately 45 per cent of households own at least one car, while 8 per cent of households own more than one, said Mr Ong. He also proposed mandating that car dealers explicitly show a breakdown of the cost of the car, and how much gross profit they are making. And he suggested the Government take the lead in helping Singaporeans adopt electric vehicles (EVs), by facilitating the installation of vehicle charge points and earmarking parking lots for EVs. “The infrastructure required for Singaporeans to truly live in a car-lite way – such as a much denser network of MRT stations, or even the advent of autonomous car-sharing schemes – is still years away (from realisation)”, said Mr Ong. He said in the meantime, solutions are needed for problems surrounding cars and car ownership. - CNA/ll AA MediaCorp News Group ©2015 MediaCorp Pte Ltd