SHAH ALAM, 11 Nov: The central government should exempt the goods and services tax (GST) on all books and not limit it to only textbooks, exercise books, dictionaries and children’s books.
The Member of Parliament for Lembah Pantai, Nurul Izzah Anwar, said that the exemption confuses the public and it is open to abuse as a result of the confusion on classification.
“Why is the government taxing effort to learn and acquire knowledge,” said the PKR Vice President in a media statement.
She said that thousands of other books are made up of fiction and non-fiction, covers a wide range of subjects including science, mathematics, economics, history, literature and politics.
“The people will spend more when April 2015 arrives and this will prevent good reading habits.
“The government needs to classify all books, regardless of category, as goods without the GST,” said Nurul Izzah.
NS