Section 13O and 13U Fund Incentives: Current Requirements for Family Offices
Minimum AUM, local investment requirements, hiring conditions and how MAS expectations for single family offices have evolved.
Singapore’s Section 13O and 13U tax incentive schemes remain the backbone of the single-family-office landscape, exempting qualifying fund income from tax when conditions on assets under management, business spending and investment professionals are met.
The 13O scheme, typically used by smaller structures, requires a minimum fund size of S$20 million at the point of application, while 13U — designed for larger operations — requires S$50 million. Both schemes carry tiered local business-spending requirements and minimum headcounts for investment professionals, with at least one non-family professional required under current guidance.
The capital-deployment requirement obliges funds to invest a portion of AUM in qualifying local investments, which include Singapore-listed equities, qualifying debt securities, funds distributed by Singapore-licensed managers and eligible private-market investments.
Families planning an application should treat the process as a twelve-month project: structuring advice, MAS engagement, banking relationships, hiring and office premises all interact, and property decisions — both office space for the family office and real-estate allocations within the portfolio — are best sequenced alongside the incentive timeline.
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