Datuk Seri Panglima Masidi Manjun
KOTA KINABALU (May 24): Finance Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Masidi Manjun on Wednesday expressed shock over the small number of personnel in the section that manages the collection of tax imposed on oil palm producers.
Masidi when replying to a supplementary question by Elopura assemblyman Calvin Chong on the amount of tax collected from the oil palm sector, said the number of staff would be increased.
“The first step is to increase the staff under the section managing the collection system and secondly, we will improve the system so that we are more effective in our collection. We are working with Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on this,” he said.
Masidi added that the section will be upgraded into a department under the Finance Ministry so they have more staff and be able to implement responsibilities well.
According to Masidi, there are instances where oil palm companies under-declared their tax to the state government.
“They submitted the actual statistics to MPOB but sent one with a lower figure to the state Finance Ministry. So the tax imposed is based on the statistics submitted so we are trying to bridge this little problem with MPOB.
“Every time we receive a statistics report from a company, we will cross check with MPOB to make sure that the figures tally. If we still have doubts, we will get MACC to come in and investigate,” he added.
According to Masidi, the Finance Ministry has issued five assessment notices worth more than RM53 million to companies which under-declared the oil palm tax that is supposed to be paid to the government.
“The Finance Ministry with the cooperation of relevant agencies will make sure that we collect all that is owed to the government as the amount is really high,” he said adding, “as I have said jokingly, we should act like an Ah Long in order to collect what is owed to the government and by this, I mean to work hard to ensure that we collect what is due to the government. We have to collect anything that belongs to the state as revenue.”