KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is one of the lowest tax revenue collectors in South-East Asia, with a tax-to-gross domestic product ratio of 11.8%.
Malaysia University Science and Technology (Must) economist Prof Emeritus Dr Barjoyai Bardai said Malaysia fell behind Singapore and Thailand and is struggling to catch up. Both use the goods and services (GST) and value-added taxation system.
“We are far behind due to neighbouring countries using GST. Recently, for example, Singapore has increased the tax rate, so our tax collection is even much lower.
“Malaysia collected RM40bil using the GST. Now, with the sales and service tax (SST), we collect less than RM30bil, and the revenue from the service sector is less than half,” he told Bernama.Barjoyai said overall, the SST collection is only about 15% of the total tax collection.
