ABSTRACT
Singapore is the smallest country in South-East Asia, although it is densely populated, with the population standing at over five million in 2016. In 1982, the Singaporean legislature enacted the Charities Act 1982, to register and better administer charities in Singapore, and to permit the Commissioner of Charities to determine the charitable status of organisations, and this was modelled on the English 1960 statute. Under s 2 of the Act, 'charitable purposes' were defined as 'purposes that are exclusively charitable according to the law of Singapore'. One of the most noticeable things concerning charity law within Singapore is the plethora of advancement of religion cases, in comparison with the other heads of charity. Singapore retains the traditional English law, that is, the approach prior to the United Kingdom removing the presumption of public benefit from all its heads of charity in 2006. In other words, public benefit in Singapore is presumed for the first three heads of charity.
