We refer to the letter by Mr. Stanley Jeremiah (IRAS reply failed to address inefficiency issue, 10 Jan 2011)

We audit tax assessments to ensure that claims are correctly allowed to all taxpayers. If the conditions for claim are not met, like in Mr. Jeremiah's case where more than one sibling had claimed parent relief, we withdraw the wrongful claim from all the claimants and send them letters to explain why the claim has been disallowed.

There are various ways to administer the parent relief. Mr Jeremiah suggested that IRAS write to all claimants in the case of multiple claims and give them a reasonable period to respond to IRAS as to who among the claimants will be claiming the relief, before revising the claimants' tax computations. We had done this in the past. Our experience had shown that this was less effective as claimaints have less urgency to agree on the person to claim the relief. Most of them would reach agreement quickly after we withdraw the claims from all of them.