The Finance Ministry wants high-costing and luxury items such as spacecraft, planes and snowmobiles to be among goods taxed under the sales and services tax (SST) scheme to be re-introduced in September.
In a statement, minister Lim Guan Eng was referring to such items, deemed big-ticket items, which had been included in the list of proposed tax-exempt goods released by the Customs Department yesterday.
He said the list was still in the proposal stage and public feedback was needed to determine which items should ultimately be included, or removed from the list.
"Among the items listed to be exempted (from SST) are big-ticket items such as planes, luxury ships, passenger ferries, helicopters, spacecraft and skiing equipment.
"Even if the list released by the Customs Department is just a proposal, the Finance Ministry is of the view that expensive and luxury items, dubbed big-ticket items, should be subjected to SST," Lim said.
The minister also reiterated his claim yesterday, in which he acknowledged that the goods and services tax (GST) introduced by the previous BN-led government, but which was zero-rated by the new government, accumulated higher tax collections for the country than SST could.
However, it said this came at the expense of the rakyat as more taxpayers, including the average person, was subjected to the six percent GST.
"GST is more efficient and transparent when it is charged to 60 percent of the consumer price index (CPI) basket of goods compared to 38 percent of the CPI basket of goods (charged) to SST," he said. A basket of goods is an economic term referring to everyday consumer and household products such as food, clothing, furniture and services.
As such, Lim explained GST succeeded in collecting RM44 billion, compared to the RM21 billion to be collected from SST.
He added, however: "With the replacement of GST with SST, RM23 billion which was collected from GST will be returned to the rakyat." - Mkini
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