OUR gross domestic product averages $53,000 per person, which makes us one of the wealthiest nations.

TEXT/ILLUSTRATION: LARRY HAVERKAMP AND MAROO

The International Monetary Fund ranks us number 22 among 180 countries. The World Bank puts us at number 19.

Did that just happen? How did it come about? Many of us take life in Singapore for granted, probably because we've never lived anywhere else.

I made a comparison, which will save you the trouble of moving overseas to find out for yourself!

Here are five advantages of life in Singapore.

1) Low taxes. Our tax rates are 0 per cent for the first $20,000, which makes life easier for low-income earners.

For the rich, taxes top out at 20 per cent for incomes over $320,000. It attracts high-income workers who appreciate not having to pay most of their income to the Government.

In comparison, countries charging the most taxes are Denmark (59 per cent) and Sweden (56 per cent), reported Telegraph.co.uk last year.

Companies here also enjoy low tax rates. They pay a top rate of 18 per cent on incomes over $300,000, which will drop to 17 per cent next year.

When it comes to investing, we offer the undisputed best deal. Our taxes on interest, dividends, capital gains and inheritance are all 0 per cent. You can't get lower than that.

2) Simple taxes. In the US, H&R Block is a US$4-billion ($5.8b) company that prepares income tax returns.

The US tax system is complicated. It has many loopholes and no one wants to miss any. So, 21 million US taxpayers pay an average of US$175 to 137,000 H&R Block tax experts to file taxes for them.

We don't have such an industry since our tax code is simple. It takes less than an hour to complete taxes online, which was the preferred way of filing for 90 per cent of taxpayers this year.

3) Low interest rates. We don't think about interest rates much, but they have a lot to do with our success.

Low interest rates make homes affordable. Our family, for example, pays only 1.6 per cent interest on our mortgage.

In the US and most of Europe you can't find a 3-year variable rate home loan for less than 4 per cent, and that is already an all-time low.

Businesses also benefit. Low interest rates make it easier for our local companies to keep costs down and compete internationally.

4) Good location. We are lucky. We don't sit on an earthquake fault like Sumatra and are not in hurricane alley like Hong Kong, the Philippines or Bangladesh.

We are located at a natural transit point that has made Singapore a logical port.

Our Port of Singapore Authority has made the most of this advantage. Today, Singapore is the most efficient and widely used port in the world.

5) Low crime. I have a friend from Germany who told me: 'Singapore is a very good place for good people and a very bad place for bad people.'

In many countries, parks are not crowded at night because people don't dare to walk through them. The chance of being robbed is too high.

We tend to take safety for granted. Our yearly murder rate is only 5 per one million residents.

That comes to about 25 murders per year, which is about one every two weeks. That may sound like a lot, but it ranks us among the four safest countries among 79 surveyed by the United Nations.

World's most dangerous and safe countries

*Annual murders per 1 million persons

Most Dangerous

1) Columbia: 618*

2) South Africa: 500

3) Jamaica: 324

4) Venezuela: 316

Most Safe

76) Singapore: 5

77) Japan: 5

78) Morocco: 5

79) Saudi Arabia: 4

Source: The Ninth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends

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