PM: GST reimplementation only being studied, not decided

The decision on whether the government will reimplement the goods and services tax (GST) system or not is still at the study stage, said Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

According to a Bernama report, the Prime Minister stressed that there had been no announcement from him that the government would reimplement GST in the near future.

Instead, he said that a study and consideration, including the impact of the reimplementation of the tax system, was underway.

"A lot of people keep jumping when I say don't rule out the possibility (of reimplementing GST), but I say we need to study, we need to study the bad and the good.

"I did not announce that we will implement GST again. I said we would do a study because the study found that we lack income of RM30 billion a year due to moving from GST to SST (sales and service tax)," he told reporters after officiating the World Environment Day celebration at the Taman Tugu monument today.

Ismail Sabri, in a special interview with Nikkei in Tokyo, was reported as saying that GST was seen to be able to expand the country's basic income, and the government did not rule out the possibility of restoring the tax system as an effective way to increase national income.

Ismail Sabri explained that what is most important is that the people need to understand any changes first if the government intends to introduce any new taxation system.

"If we feel that SST is no longer suitable and needs to be replaced, then the people need to understand first. We want what we announce to be accepted by the people, not rejected by the people.

"We have many more considerations that we will look at, such as whether the effect of the GST is a price increase. Is the time right now or in the future? How many more years? So don't worry, when the time comes, we will reveal, we will announce," he said.

GST was first implemented in Malaysia on April 1, 2015, at a rate of six percent.

GST was subsequently suspended on June 1, 2018, soon after GE14 and finally abolished when it was replaced with the SST system starting Sept 1, 2018.

The current tax rates for sales tax are five percent and 10 percent, while the service tax rate is six percent. - Mkini