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Guide · Updated 19 September 2026

Buying from Taobao for your company: the paperwork problem

The goods are rarely the difficulty. The difficulty is turning a Chinese marketplace order into something a Singapore finance process and an auditor will accept.

Somebody in the office finds the part, the fitting or the fifty branded tote bags on Taobao at a third of the local price. They are right about the price. What follows is the problem: the order goes on a personal card, the confirmation arrives in Chinese, the amount is in RMB, and three weeks later someone in finance is holding a screenshot and asking what to do with it.

What a Taobao order actually leaves you with

• A listing in Chinese, which may be edited or deleted by the seller after purchase
• An amount in RMB, converted at whatever rate and spread the card issuer applied
• A payment made by an individual, not by the company
• No quotation that was approved before the money went out
• No purchase order to match against
• No invoice from a named supplier, in any language
• No delivery document tying the goods to the order

Every one of these is a gap in the ordinary purchase-to-pay chain. Individually they are survivable. Together, and repeated across a year, they produce a category of spending nobody can substantiate.

What the rules actually require

A genuine business expense is deductible whatever the source, and there is no rule that says goods from Taobao cannot be claimed. The obligation is evidential: IRAS requires businesses to keep records supporting their transactions, and to retain them for five years. The record has to show what was bought, from whom, for how much, and that the business bore the cost.

On GST, the position is simpler than people assume. A Taobao seller is not GST-registered in Singapore and issues no tax invoice, so there is no input tax to claim on the goods themselves. Where GST is paid at the border and the import permit is in your company's name, that import GST is claimable if your company is GST-registered. If someone else imported in their own name, it is not yours to claim. The mechanics are in our guide to importing from China.

The three ways companies deal with it

1. Reimburse an employee

Somebody buys it personally and claims it back. Fast, and fine for a one-off. As a habit it puts company purchasing on staff credit cards, generates foreign exchange differences nobody reconciles, and leaves the contract with the seller in an individual's name. If the goods are wrong, the company has no standing to complain.

2. Use a consumer forwarding agent

A parcel service buys and forwards on your behalf. It solves shipping and nothing else. You still receive a consumer-grade order record rather than a supplier invoice, and there is still no quotation to approve or purchase order to raise.

3. Buy through a Singapore vendor

A local company buys the goods in its own name and sells them on to you. You approve a quotation, raise a purchase order against it, receive the goods, and pay one invoice in SGD from one supplier. The purchase looks like every other purchase in your ledger, because structurally it is one.

How to decide

Buy direct if it is small, one-off, and nobody will need to explain it later. Use a vendor when the purchase recurs, when the value is high enough that an approval trail matters, when the specification is technical enough that getting it wrong is expensive, or when the person who would otherwise do the buying has better things to do than negotiate in a language they do not read.

The honest framing is that the agent fee buys three things: the Chinese-language work, the shipping and import, and the paperwork. If you only need the third of those, it is an expensive way to get it. If you need all three, it is usually cheaper than doing it yourself once staff time is counted.

Common questions

Can I claim a Taobao purchase as a business expense in Singapore?

A genuine business purchase is deductible whatever the source, so the question is not whether you may claim it but whether you can evidence it. IRAS requires supporting records kept for five years. A Chinese-language listing screenshot and a personal card statement in RMB is weak evidence: it does not clearly show the seller, the business purpose, or that the company rather than an individual bore the cost.

Can I claim GST input tax on a Taobao purchase?

Not on the seller's price. A Taobao seller is not a Singapore GST-registered supplier and issues no tax invoice, so there is no input tax to claim on the goods. Where GST is paid at import and the permit is in your company's name, that import GST is claimable if your company is GST-registered.

What is wrong with paying on a personal card and claiming it back?

It works once. Done repeatedly it creates a staff member carrying company purchases on personal credit, foreign exchange differences nobody reconciles, and expense claims with no purchase order behind them. It also puts the contractual relationship with the seller in the employee's name rather than the company's, which matters if goods are wrong.

What does finance actually need?

A quotation to approve before money is committed, a purchase order to match against it, an invoice from a named supplier in SGD, proof of payment from a company account, and a delivery record showing the goods arrived. Buying direct from Taobao produces none of these reliably.

Why can a sourcing agent use a Taobao receipt when our company cannot?

Nothing in the rules distinguishes the two. What differs is the surrounding evidence and what it costs to produce. An importer pays the seller from a company account, records the exchange rate at the point of payment, books the cost against a specific job, and holds the import permit in its own name, so the receipt lands in a file already built to receive it. That file is built once and shared across every order. For a company buying a few times a year, building it for a single purchase costs considerably more than the agent fee it would replace.

Is buying through a Singapore vendor more expensive?

The agent fee is a real cost, generally 5% to 10% of the goods value. Against it, set the foreign exchange spread on card payments, the staff time spent translating and chasing, the freight you would have arranged yourself, and the cost of an order that arrives wrong with no local recourse. For a one-off small purchase, buying direct is cheaper. For recurring business purchasing, it usually is not.

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