SUBANG JAYA, 15 Oct: Each and every citizen of this country will have to pay at least RM270 a year when the goods and services tax (GST) is implemented by the Barisan Nasional (BN) government on April 1, 2015.
The Member of Parliament for Kelana Jaya, Wong Chen, said that this will result in the average household having to pay about RM1,800 a year to the government and this will certainly have a tremendous pressure on the people who are burdened by the cost of living.
He said that the total amount of tax paid is more than the amount received by each household through the provisions of the 1Malaysia People’s Aid (BR1M) next year.
“The people who are most worried are the low-income earners who dominate about 70 percent of the country’s population because although the BR1M assistance is increased, they need to pay the GST.
“Even if there is an additional RM300 from the BR1M, it would only be enough is the person is stingy in managing finances, but most would have to fork out more money,” he said during the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) Budget Forum at the Empire Hotel near here last night.
He also slammed the statement by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak that the GST only earns a small ‘profit’ at a rate of RM690 million when it is implemented.
Instead,, he said that the central government would be able to earn at least RM8.5 billion in net income through the GST.
“If the earnings from the GST is RM8.5 billion and it is divided by the 30 million people in this country, then it is estimated that each person needs to pay an extra RM270 for the GST,” he said.
The government will introduce the GST of 6 percent in April 2015 as a smarter method to collect tax and full up public funds.
Putrajaya claims that although they expect to collect RM23.2 billion in gross income, however the net income is only RM690 million.
Pakatan Rakyat (PR) however questioned the amount by saying that the government will be able to collect a net income of RM8.5 billion.
At this moment, only 18 percent of the people in this country pay income tax, while half of the seven million households receive less than RM4,000 per month.
NS