Bintulu business folk learn more about GST at seminar
BINTULU: The ‘Goods and Services Tax (GST) 4.0’ seminar held at Parkcity Everly Hotel here recently was aimed at educating members of the local business community on GST and issues related to its implementation.
The programme was run by the senior officers of Customs Association Sarawak Chapter ( Perkasa).
“We believe with the approach of putting education on the forefront, we should be able to reduce misunderstanding or misconception of issues confronting businessmen or traders,” said Bintulu Customs Department division head Yussuf Drahman, who is also Perkasa president.
According to him, GST is the best tax system in the world – a strategic reform under the Economic Transformation Programme ( ETP) by the government to modernise the taxation system that would address effectiveness and efficiency revenue collection.
“It is designed to assist our business to be competitive in the global marketplace,” he pointed out.
According to him, the participation of the business community is encouraging and thus, it is hoped that Perkasa would be able to hold more of such seminars in the future.
“We would certainly add value and create further improvement on the content of our seminar.
“We plan to conduct a seminar on ‘GST Audits and Customs Post Importation Valuation’ in August this year.
“We hope to attract big participation from the business and trading community to these seminars, which are useful in arming them with the knowledge of current requirements of the Customs administration,” said Yussuf.
Sarawak Customs Department director Ahmad Zainuddin Drahman officiated at the opening of the seminar.
In his speech, he said the department had taken more friendly steps to ensure compliance of the regulatory and GST Act 2014 through the ‘Customs Blue Ocean Strategy (CBOS)’.
“The approach we used before this was in the form of enforcement, which was less effective.
“This time around, Customs has changed its strategy to be more clientfriendly and be based on education in an effort to educate businessmen, who are still confused about and do not have full understanding of GST,” he said.
Ahmad Zainuddin said Customs officers execute verification audit on the company’s premises at risk of making mistakes in declaring the GST- 03, and not issuing GST- 03 within 30 days of the taxable period.
As a result of the registrant who made the mistake found in the verification audit, the registrant would be directed to amend the statement of GST- 03 within 30 days and pay back taxes if less is declared.
Ahmad Zainuddin hoped that through CBOS andtheGSTseminar, theregistrants would have better understanding on the implementation of GST and able to comply with the regulations and the Act.