Call for abolition of Sabah Sales Tax
KOTA KINABALU: The Federation of Chinese Associations Sabah (FCAS) president, Tan Sri Dr. T.C. Goh, has expressed the hope that the new State Government led by Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal would consider abolishing the Sabah Sales Tax (SST) for the benefit of businesses and the people.
He hailed the newly-formed Pakatan Harapan (PH) Federal Government for realizing the people's wishes by reducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from six percent to zero percent.
Goh said this was a positive move taken by the government as an immediate measure to ease the burden of the rakyat considering that abolishing the GST involved many procedures.
He also congratulated the appointed state ministers and assistant ministers and hoped they would live up to the people's expectations in ensuring good governance of Malaysia and Sabah.
That aside, he pointed out the tax system in East and West Malaysia should be standardized.
“Since the Federal Government can do away with GST, the State Government should also abolish the SST,” he said.
He said SST was imposed on the sale of crude palm oil (7.5 percent), timber (15 percent) and lottery tickets (15 percent).
Apart from SST, Goh explained that palm oil producers here not only pay income and corporate taxes, but also a higher tax rate imposed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) compared to their peninsular counterparts.
He said the 15 percent SST imposed on lottery tickets also encouraged the sale and purchase of illegal lottery tickets.
“Why is SST imposed in Sabah but not in the West Malaysian states? Why do we need to pay such a high SST rate in addition to federal taxes? Is it fair for Sabah to pay the sales tax that is nonexistent in West Malaysia?” he asked.
Goh hoped, therefore, that the State Government led by Shafie could look into abolishing SST in Sabah.
He also urged the Federal Government to return the tax revenue contributed by Sabah to the State for the development of basic infrastructure.
On another note, Goh said, the Sabah Barisan Nasional (BN) government has contributed to infrastructure development in the State, prior to the change in government.
“There were indeed some flaws in the implementation of infrastructure development, which the new government needs to address. Among the improvements that should be made are better transparency and simplifying the government system, particularly in granting approval for development plans (DP),” he suggested.
He said, a delay of three to five years for the approval of DP could lead to increased costs, which would ultimately be passed down to consumers.
Goh said the main reason for the delay in DP approval was that the plan was not evaluated by professionals in the field. As such, he hoped that the new State Government would address this issue and ensure the procedure be made more transparent and simpler.