Goods and Services Tax (GST): Quest for Building a Sustainable, Equitable and Efficient Revenue Base
Presently, Malaysia is advocating for Goods and Services tax (GST) as a new tax regime in replacement of present Sales and Services Tax (SST). GST is a tax imposed on goods and services at every point of production and distribution stage in the supply chain including importation of goods and services. Unlike SST, a single stage tax, GST is a multi stage tax, where tax is imposed on all taxable goods and services including importation of goods and services. Aims to improve the revenue base efficiency and introduce administrative efficiency; second attempts have been made by the federal government to introduce GST but were twice postponed by two ex- Prime Ministers due to social and political pressures. As of today, the implementation of GST is temporarily put on hold in order to allow the Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMC), the revenue raiser of the government, to educate general business community on GST. This paper therefore aims to discuss the effectiveness of GST educational awareness and campaign by the Ministry of Finance and Royal Malaysian Customs (RMC) on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Being the largest group of business, the operations of SMEs will be much affected by the GST implementation and to know what is their current knowledge on GST is quite paramount to the achievement of efficient tax reforms. The study tries to investigate the awareness and knowledge of the directors cum sole proprietors of SMEs on GST. The study also assesses the level of training and promotion provided by RMC for the SMEs. A questionnaire is designed to elicit information on GST from respondents in order to determine the level of preparedness from the stake-players. One thousand and two hundred (1,200) questionnaires were administered to respondents by mailing system. One hundred and seventy (170) questionnaires were returned, implying that the rate of return is 14.16％. The study revealed that series of awareness campaign prior to the implementation of the new tax structure have been promoted by the Ministry of Finance and RMC to educate the stakeholders on the workability of GST. The study also revealed that general populace has little or no knowledge of GST prior to the introduction of the tax regime by the Government. The study covers small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in two out of thirteen (13) states, which are located in the northern part of the country. The need therefore arises to cover the remaining parts of the country in order to come out with a comprehensive result on the level of preparedness of Malaysian citizens on goods and services tax. It may be practically impossible to implement the new tax regime if the stake-players are not properly educated, and carried along in the process of changing from the existing SST to the new GST structure. Therefore, the originality of the study is to make an impact in educating and campaigning for the awareness of GST prior to the implementation in Malaysia.
Goods and Services Tax (GST) Sales and Services Tax (SST) Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Partial correlation
Khalil, Samihah Salihu, Abdulwaheed A.
School of Government, Universiti Utara Malaysia 06010, Sintok, Alor Setar, Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia
国际会议
2012 International Conference on Public Administration(8th)(2012年公共管理国际会议 ICPA)
印度海德拉巴
英文
401-410
2012-10-25（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）