Another Finance Minister Who Can’t Count

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Dec 18, 2009

The 2nd Finance Minister tabled the controversial Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill yesterday. To justify the implementation of the Goods & Services Tax, Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah had claimed that “the rakyat will not be burdened under GST”:

By Tony Pua

The household expenditure for the lowest income group will see savings of RM14.52 per year
The highest income group will have RM346.92 savings.

At the same time for businesses, the Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni also stated that:

Exporters would end up having tax savings of RM1.4 billion under the “zero-rated” system
Impact studies showed that businesses overallstood to save RM4 billion in taxes under GST as professional services would be exempted.

However, despite the savings by the rakyat as well as businesses, the Government will still be able to increase its receipts from GST by more than RM1 billion compared to under the previous regime of Sales and Services Tax, which collected nearly RM12 billion from businesses alone.

The Minister’s statements does not make sense just as money does not grow on trees.

If businesses will reduce tax contribution by RM5.4 billion as stated by the 2nd Finance Minister, while at the same time increase the collection of GST to more than RM13 billion, it can only mean that the additional RM6.4 billion must be collected from the rakyat!