ضريبة السلع والخدمات- GST

           It is getting colder here, in Nottingham. I’ve seen the leaves turn from green to red and yellow, and now the trees look lifeless and barren as autumn dictates its rules. As I struggle in these unknown territories of freezing mornings and nights with chilling winds, I really could not care less about my country thousands of miles away and its problems- I need to warm myself first.

          Who cares about complicated taxes and screwed up politicians anyway?  We students are better off playing games on the next-generation consoles or reading rather pointless writings upon philosophy and absurd ways of life. If you are a slightly decent person then I would say that we should just concentrate upon our studies and get stuck in libraries reading things you can’t understand over and over again.

            If you don’t enjoy games, then you can watch movies or try to write some funny things on your blog to increase your followers. Or else, just watch some cat videos on Youtube  or weird stunts made by Japanese people. Sleeping the whole day is a better thing to do , rather than writing about taxes. It’s a depressing thing to write about, when the economics class doesn’t really make any sense anyway.

           I decided to write today because human beings have a sense of responsibility and some sort of love towards justice and equality, no matter how complacent   and indulgent they are. Thus, after hours of gaming and doing pointless things as written above, I hereby decided to purify my soul and do some good.

                GST is a tax. We should really care about it, and we have no option but to care, since the ones paying the six percent is ourselves. Unless if you were born a millionaire and you have too much money to spend, then you are better off doing something else. It’s a substitution to the income tax.

              Income tax is an inefficient method of taxation, as many people can get away with it. Our nation’s income tax has a filing system, which involves filling in information about our income and expenses in a year, details about assets and family members. This information will be processed by LHDN, and that will determine the amount of tax you have to pay. People can easily falsify this information to avoid paying tax, by simply cheating on the number of children and wives they have, or through creative accounting, and many other ways.

                  Since most Malaysians are middle income earners, they are not even obligated to pay taxes.  Only about a million out of 12 million workers in Malaysia pay income taxes, and that explains the inefficiency.

               GST on the other hand applies to almost every kind of goods and services, and thus even those who avoided tax before will have to pay the burden. GST is a substitution tax, in the sense that when it is implemented, income tax is lowered-it is a substitute to the ineffective income tax.

          Sales and services tax (SST) which was implemented before was just as inefficient. It is limited to only 25 groups of trades, and applies only to retailers-the ones at the end of the production chain. In other words, you don’t have to pay tax if you are not the final consumer. GST applies tax to all stages of production, so if the retailers are not qualified for GST, manufacturers will have to pay the tax for they purchases from suppliers of raw goods , and then they will sell the produced goods to retailers at a higher price  and taxed with same percentage. The difference between the 6 percent paid to the supplier of raw foods and the 6 percent sold to the retailer is paid to the government.

                 I need to learn the art of simplifying things. Sorry if you don’t understand that- go read some more.

To make it simple, as GST applies to all stages of production, people have no choice but to pay. Period.

             We are not against taxation or specifically, GST. It is an efficient taxation system, and it will definitely bring more income for the government. Honestly, it is an improvement, and we should support a better system of bureaucracy.  Supposedly, as the nation’s income increases, there is more room for development and the betterment of people’s lives . Without taxes, the beloved government can’t afford to build  roads and schools for our children.  Damaged trains will not be repaired, teachers be unpaid, doctors starved to death, hospitals stop working , and there won’t be any subsidy for  gas and food either.

                 Therefore , we should be thankful to the government who had to raise taxes for our sake, albeit rather reluctantly. Without  them the country would have turned into a sparse desert, a warzone without a 

legit currency. Like seriously.

                  What the heck.

            It is an undeniable fact that the government had been complacent in the handling of our money, or as one can see in the Auditor’s report, they revelled in wasting it. Why should excess in spending caused by corruption and misuse of funds be paid by the people? Shouldn’t they limit their expenses before asking people to pay more?  Stating that GST would not raise the price of goods is a lie. Even implementing it will cost a lot to firms, as they are required to hire accountants , buy computers and programming systems to calculate taxes that need to be paid to the government. Production costs will increase , as electricity bills will rise , and so will the price of raw goods-the exception of GST to electricity only includes the first 200 units.

                   I like to reiterate that we do  not have problems with taxes. It is for the sake of the country and the people. The only problem we have is with the way the money is spent, and the motivation of those rulers spending it.

         It is cold here, and we pay GST  at the rate of 20% in the UK. Yet we feel nothing wrong about it. Because the governance is trustworthy, and we know where does our money goes to.