Follow Sarawak govt in increasing revenue through new sources, Putrajaya told

KUCHING (Jan 27): The federal government is urged to emulate the Sarawak government in exploring new sources of income to increase fiscal revenue.

Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) Batu Kitang branch organising secretary Gerald Goh said such move would be better than “constantly implementing new taxes from the original ones”.

“The unity government has raised the service tax from six per cent to eight per cent, and it has also imposed a tax on the field of traditional Chinese medicine, which is a squeeze approach, a continuous fragmentation of the original economic pie so that the government can gain some additional revenue.

“However, we all know that this is built at the expense of the Rakyat (people),” he said in a statement yesterday.

In recent years, Goh said the Sarawak government had been increasing revenue from new economic sectors including green energy, digital economy and oil projects.

He added that these had resulted in a record revenue of RM13.1 billion last year.

“With the ringgit’s falling and long-standing inflation problem, the federal government should restructure its tax revenues rather than raising tax rates to increase the country’s revenue.

“The move to raise the service tax rate is undoubtedly a ‘punishment’ for those who pay taxes according to the rules,” he pointed out.

At present, Goh said Malaysia’s tax rate is relatively low compared with neighbouring countries, namely Singapore and Thailand.

He, however, added that the government’s choice to raise the service tax can be described as prescribing the wrong medicine for the wrong sickness.