Mr Colin Tan (“Court Ruling creates uncertainty for developers”, TODAY, 10 May) seemed to suggest that the Glengary case was the first time that the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) had taken action to reassess the annual value of the land that is under development. This is not the case.

The Annual Values (AVs) of any property, including vacant land under development, is reviewed on a regular basis to reflect the prevailing market values in any year. Hence, the AVs may go up or come down in accordance with the market values.

Real estate developers would be fully aware that the AVs of their lands are assessed on a ‘vacant land’ basis during the period of development. This is provided for in the Property Tax Act, and it has been our long standing position to disregard pre-sales when determining the AV of such vacant land.

For this case, the developer disagreed with our position and brought the matter to court. The Court of Appeal has affirmed our existing position. Hence, the decision would not have introduced more uncertainty into the business of property development nor affected developers’ bids for the lands, as alluded to by the writer.