KUCHING, August 23: Once the Sales and Services Tax (SST) kicks in this Sept 1, the first taxable period for businesses with financial year ending in odd months (January, March, May, July, September and November) is Sept 1-30.
Those with financial year ending in even months will be taxable at the end of the second month (Oct 31), said Customs director-general Datuk Seri Subromaniam Tholasy.
Subsequent taxable periods after the SST implementation will be set every two months, where statement and tax payment must be submitted by the last day of the following month.
Subromaniam thus advised business owners to check their first taxable period in their registration approval letter. Since the first taxable period for businesses with financial year ending in odd months is Sept 1-30, the SST-02 statement and payment must be produced by Oct 31.
For companies with financial period ending in even months, the first taxable period will start from Sept 1 till Oct 31, and the deadline to submit statement and payment is Nov 30, he explained.
“The Customs Department is prepared for the implementation of SST in terms of system, laws and regulations, as well as procedures.
“We have also uploaded the SST guidelines online for reference of industries and companies. We expect all 31 guidelines to be uploaded by this week,” Subromaniam told a press conference after the SST nationwide outreach programme at the state Customs Complex here today.
With one week to go before SST comes into enforcement, he reminded businesses to register before the Aug 31 deadline.
The Customs Department has also launched its online registration system on Aug 16, which has received over 470 new business registrations.
To date, the department has also registered 77,451 businesses automatically from the previous Goods and Services Tax (GST) system to the SST system. Of the lot, 32,577 are registered for sales tax, while 44,874 are for services tax.
Sarawak has over 3,700 companies that benefitted from the automatic registration to the SST system.
“With regards to the automatic registration, we don’t deny that there were errors in registration, where a company that should not have been registered for SST is now in the system.
“This situation might be due to error when a business owner filled up the MSIC Code (Malaysian Standard Industrial Classification) in their GST forms. When this occurs, business owners must submit a written application to cancel their registration,” he advised.
The SST outreach programme is the sixth to be held in the state to explain to businesses that would be registered under the new taxation system.
“We are confident that the implementation of SST will run smoothly come Sept 1. We also urge our officers to go to the ground to assist business owners in their SST preparations,” Subromaniam said.
When asked if the price of goods could drop with the implementation of SST, he said there were many contributing factors on the matter and that the people would have to wait and see.
He added that the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs would be monitoring the price of goods, especially taxable items. — DayakDaily
