SHAH ALAM, 18 Mar: Pakatan Rakyat (PR) will be offering a fairer tax system to all groups of this country is they successfully manage to conquer Putrajaya in the upcoming 13th General Elections (GE-13).
According to PKR Strategy Director, Rafizi Ramli, the existing tax system is outdated and needs to be reorganised so as to not continue oppressing the lower income groups.
He said that the tax system adopted by the Umno-BN government now was made decades ago and is not fit to be currently applied.
“This tax system was made on the salary scale about 40 to 50 years ago, that is why, for example, now under Umno-BN, for those who get taxable income is RM100,000 and above every year,” he said in a Youth Dialogue session with Anwar Ibrahim at Bandar Utama recently.
He explained that this means that workers in this country who receive a monthly salary of RM10,000 and above are the highest tax payers in the country.
“This means that if you work as a senior officer, you pay the same tax value as Ananda Krishnan, Ananda Krishnan have a RM18 billion fortune,” he insinuated.
Rafizi added that if PR is able to form the Federal Government, the tax structure will be revamped and increased to RM450,000 per annum and this will only affect employees who earn RM45,000 per month and above.
“If it is RM450,000, this means that those with a monthly income of RM40,000 per month would be the highest taxpayer.
“For the rest, we will create a tax class distribution so that executives need not pay the same amount of taxes as the richest men,” he said at the forum which was attended by more than 200 people.
In the meantime, Rafizi also explained that PR will be using mechanisms of justice and fairness when they want to implement the government service tax (GST) which was introduced by the Umno-BN government.
The GST which was introduced by the Umno-BN government was to lower the income tax as well as to provide continuous financial resources to the government.
He said that the implementation of the GST will be a burden to 28 million Malaysians and will only benefit a portion of Malaysians due to the reduction of income tax.
“It is unfair to implement the GST now because those that benefit from the lower tax are only 1 million Malaysians and now, we will defer the GST until there is a reform in our country’s economy,” he said.