Lim: Be honest with yourself

SUBANG: Be honest in declaring taxes and the government will reciprocate by adopting a soft approach towards traders and businesses in the implementation of the Sales and Services Tax (SST), says Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng (pic).

The government would also trust retailers and businesses to declare their taxes honestly, he said.

“There are some businesses that are unsure if they are exempted from SST, as such the government will trust them to do the necessary.

“Let them apply (to the Customs Department) first. If they are exempted, then it is fine.

.“However, if we investigate and find that they are not exempted then they will have to pay the taxes.

“That is the soft approach we meant, where we place the trust on them first,” he told reporters after a briefing with businesses and traders here yesterday.

Lim hoped the people would not try to evade taxes.

“Tell the truth and we will be able to overcome any issues,” he said.

He said the briefing yesterday, which lasted over three hours, was fruitful as many questions were raised on SST, which is expected to kick in on Sept 1.

Lim said one of the issues raised was on the exemption for milk.

“Currently, normal milk without sugar is exempted but there are many other types of milk, such as chocolate-flavoured milk.

“So, I was informed about it and I believe milk is important for the development of children so I will exempt chocolate-flavoured milk from SST. This is the form of feedback and information that we are willing to listen to and if needed, give exemption as well,” he said.

At another conference, the Cus­toms Department said it was targeting a collection of RM22bil from SST.

Customs director-general Datuk Seri T. Subromaniam said it covered new industries.

Although he did not name them, the four new industries are gambling activities, airline and charter flight services including domestic helicopter services (except those in Sabah and Sarawak), information technology (IT) services and domestic electric supply involving a monthly usage of more than 600 units.

“We expect a collection of RM22bil from SST. That is the target for Customs and this is including the new sectors,” said Subromaniam.

Initially, it was reported that the collection for SST would be RM23bil less than the Goods and Services Tax (GST), whose collection was expected to total RM44bil this year.

Subromaniam said that so far, the department had registered 77,451 businesses under SST via an automatic system transfer from MyGST to MySST. From the total, 32,557 are for the sales tax while 44,874 are registered for services.

“Traders and businesses,” he said, “have been notified via email.”

However, he said, some of them were not eligible to be registered under MySST.

He called on businesses that were not eligible to contact the Customs Department and iron out the matter immediately.

Some 10,000 businesses that are yet to be registered under SST have been urged to do so because they may face problems when SST begins.-Star