KUCHING: Crowe Horwath together with RHB Banking Group organised a seminar late Wednesday on the 2015 Budget, advising Sarawakian businesses to seek clarity and deepen their understanding of their needs in order to comply with the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Present at the press conference are Poon (seated, second left), Chua (seated, second right), Lim (seated right), Chong (seated left), Peck (standing left), Matthew Wong (standing second left), Kenny Wong, (standing second right) and Chai.
The seminar featured KL based speakers from Crowe Horwath’s tax practice as well as from RHB Research Institute. The well received seminar provided insights on the 2015 Budget, strategic tax planning advices as well as commentary on recent tax cases and landmark development in the interpretation of tax legislation.
The speakers also touched on the impending implementation of GST in Malaysia on April 1, 2015 and its impact on businesses as well as the Malaysian economy.
According to Hudson Chua, partner for Crowe Horwath Kuching, they can see that the level of awareness of GST and the requirement in order to comply with all the requirements of GST is increasing.
“Awareness is increasing. The issue now is to provide clarity to the businesses and taxpayers as to what they need to do in order to fully comply. I think that’s where we are now,” he said.
In regards to the general public still hoping for a postponement, Fennie Lim Phaik Hui, tax executive director of Crowe Horwath, opined that with the law gazetted on June 19 this year, and with the recent announcement, they could see that there is no indication of postponement.
As such, Lim encourages businesses to firstly get themselves registered, after which they would need to get their system GST-ready.
She explained that this means to start looking at the system that they are using currently, whether they should upgrade their system or migrate into a new system if the current system cannot support the GST requirement.
Lim also advised businesses to at least seek some GST consultation from the experts to find out whether their type of businesses, the transactions they are having, should fall under six per cent (which is the standard rated), zero per cent, out of scope, or exempt-rated supply.
In addition, businesses need to understand how they could make full use of the claim of the input tax.
On a side note, Lim touched on the Price Control And Anti Profiteering Act 2011 which she emphasised has to come hand in hand with the implementation of GST.
She noted that this is because this will have great impact on the pricing adjustment as when GST comes in, it will definitely affect the prices.
“So we would like to encourage all the businesses out there to look into the pricing adjustment.
But also, bear in mind, with this Price Control And Anti Profiteering Act 2011, which means that no one should make full use of the implementation of GST to fatten their profits unreasonably. This is the message we want to convey to all the businesses,” Lim said.
According to Poon Yew Hoe, managing partner of Crowe Horwath Malaysia, although there are not many changes in the Budget this year, the government still has announced either some extension of tax incentives or they have announced one or two new incentives.
He believes that generally in the market, the public are not fully aware of the incentives which leads to its lack of capitalisation.
“I think the government is in a way trying to provide these incentives to sort of soften the burden of GST.
It would be good to encourage the public to understand what are all the incentives, especially the businesses, and see how we can capitalise on it to actually reduce our tax,” Poon said.
On this note, Poon commented that the government has given a number of tax incentives and has advised all tax payers to take full advantage of them.
These include double deduction for training in Accounting and ICT for GST and training incentives such as the double deduction for the SL1M programme, structured internship programme (SIP), scholarships for the poor and expenses for getting industry certification or professional qualifications.
Other tax incentives include 200 per cent capital allowances for automation equipment; 100 per cent income tax exemption for five years for managing, maintaining and upgrading industrial estates in less developed areas and; exemption of income for investments in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) via the Investment Account Platform.
Also present during the talk were Chong Mun Yew, tax executive director of Crowe Horwath, Peck Boon Soon, vice president of Economics Research, RHB Research Institute Sdn Bhd, Matthew Wong, senior partner of Crowe Horwath Miri, Kenny Wong, partner of Crowe Horwath Kuching and Chai Tze Chek, partner of Crowe Horwath Kuching.