For Crying Out Loud!

Okay, firstly, some people got to know about this a little earlier than most. Some got to know about it just because they’re nosy KPCs who happened to have friends who worked in organisations that have been briefed earlier. 

So, how should the “most” of us react to our line of work being given the honour of gracing the front page news?

The deadline makes the assumption (yet again) that there are more than 3 productive work days till 1 January 2009. And that large companies with loads of systems and swarms of employees can just flick a switch to comply with the new requirement automatically come the new year.

Thanks for cutting out my work for me next year.

Screw it. I’m still going on leave. See y’all next year.

What kinda answer did they expect they’d get?

If math were taught in English…

I was happily avoiding the ongoing flippety-flops of whether our children’s ability to count or reason should be taught in our national language or an international medium or any other tongue because I thought no matter the medium that we ultimately choose in the end, if needs be, we can always learn the other to a workable extent after graduation. Worked out fine for me anyway.

I also didn’t draw a tax parallel because the mastery of English in tax law is pretty decent here in Malaysia, so much so that the tax legislation used in the Inland Revenue’s website, is in fact, English. Yes, even the Malay version of the website has its legislation in English.

They burst my happy bubble today.

The income received may be chargeable to tax … irregardless of whether the payment made is in the form of cash or in kind.

Now, my math ain’t what it used to be, but does a combination of a double negative (assuming that word up there is a combination of “irrespective” and “regardless”) make it a positive?

Thankfully, it’s a draft. That will be corrected. I hope.

Been away… and will be away some more

Not because I’m actually using any of my leave as breaks a.k.a holidays, more that there’s a bug in the house. Sick little terrible two isn’t exactly something you can leave at home under any circumstances.

In any case, its approximately two weeks till the end of the year. So, a little reminder to all tax payers – that’ll give ya’ll two weekends to go do the necessary spending/ accumulating/ hustling for/ gathering/ collating/ begging/ borrowing and/or stealing the documentary evidence for all those tax deductions you’ll need for the taxable year 2008.

So, here’s your list of twelve things for Christmas you wouldn’t want to put off till the new year:-

1. Buy books (or talk to your local MPH store manager about borrowing some extra receipts for 6 years.)
2. Buy a computer (if you haven’t already in the last 3 years.)
3. Make a new year resolution to lose weight and go buy yourself a sporting equipment worth exactly RM300 (like a rowing oar… and then go to Putrajaya and whack whoever came up with that idea over the head with it.)
4. Pay for your parents’ visit to the doctor’s (insist on private. Because as far as tax deduction goes, socialist medical care doesn’t get you much.)
5. Pay your professional qualification subscriptions (if your employer reimburses you based on your receipts, ask the Association for two.)
6. If you’re pregnant and due early January next year, talk to your gynecologist about the stars’ alignment with the tax deduction you could squeeze outta an early Sagittarius baby. 
7. Donate to causes that issue you with a tax exemption receipt.
8. Pay zakat (if possible)
9. If you’re a frequent international traveller (I am freaking jealous), go check your passport’s days in and out of Malaysia and make sure you’re spending more days in Malaysia than you’re out. If you need an extra two weeks to make that happen, stay put and defer your travel plans to next year. Trust me. It ain’t just my envy talkin’.
10. Buy health insurance. 
11. Sell that house by the hill slope.
12. … and a partridge in a pear tree.

I need that Public Ruling out now!

Because I have a flippin’ painful stiff neck!

No, really. Each tiny jerk everytime the phone rings or if someone hollered at me from a workstation situated anywhere beyond directly in front of where I’m sitting sends my pain receptors into overdrive from my shoulder blades up.

Anyway, there’s supposed to be this slew of tax exemptions granted by Budget 2009 for employees who receive such heaven-sent benefits from their employers, like traditional medicine and alternative treatments… that I so need right now. The funny thing is, all those exemptions were supposed to have kicked in for the calendar year 2008. But given the propensity of our legislators for twisting the intentions of a proposal into some unimplementable creature and propel us to grander heights of global laughing stock, which employer would have the guts to pay for our neck massages without a written decree, I ask?

Oww.

Decoding Da Petrol Tax

I just have to revisit this, sorry. Going back to the RM24 per pump. Assuming you travel less than I do to and from work, and top up your tank every two weeks…. guess how much that adds up to?

Okay, let me just show you something interesting.

In one year, there are 52 weeks. So, once every two weeks makes that 26 times per year. So…

24 x 26 = [go punch that calculator and insert answer here]

Ring any bells?

Business must be bad…

Previously, signing up for tax courses used to be an initiative by whoever’s interested after having read the brochure. We never got calls from the organisers. In the past few weeks though, it dawned on me that the course organising business is probably feeling the economic gloom. I’ve personally received daily calls that practically broke down my will to spend less of my employer’s money on a day off with free food training.

On something else, its the end of the year and naturally, many are using up their year’s leave entitlement, rendering December an impotent month as far as productivity is concerned. Incidentally, the tax authorities are requesting for a financial services industry consultative session on GST on December 16th. And quite amazingly, the Big 4 accounting firms will be so short of staff around that time that they’ve started calling losers like us their commercial counterparts to attend the session on their behalf.

A long weekend ahead of us. Yay!

Update (@1.37pm): Gasp! They either read my blog (perasan) or there are strong anti-GST forces at work or some sense finally got through. The GST consultation session in December has been postponed to a later date. I don’t suppose the Kuala Terengganu by-election has anything to do with it.

Petrol Tax is currently at 21%

Don’t believe me? Read here.

Just in case you missed it because it was mentioned in such passing, let me reproduce paragraphs 3 and 4 here -

The current price of RM1.90 per litre price (RON97), the cheapest pump price since March 2006, is set without subsidies.

The “true” market price is 40 sen less.

That works out to be 21% petrol consumption tax we end up paying everytime we fill up our vehicles. In ringgit terms, that’s about RM24 per pop, assuming your car has a 60 litre tank.

Want more?

Petroleum digger-upper companies (sound cooler than drilling, don’t they?) are taxed at the rate of 38% each year as opposed to the normal corporate tax rate for most companies. Even our corporate tax rates that we bragged about so much as being lower than thy neighbours, currently stand at the upper edge in comparison with our ASEAN regional neighbours; as Thailand just announced a reduction from 30% to 25%. Okay. Refocus. Its 38%.

In addition, digger-uppers in Malaysia also pay the government the now infamous “oil royalty” at the rate of 5% of gross revenue at the federal level and 5% at the state level.

Assuming previously, part of those payments and/ or taxes were used to subsidise our fuel consumption (translation: ease the inflation), now, and especially with the 2008 digger-upper profits for the year ending 31 December 2008 (remembering that prices actually went all the way up to $140-ish per barrel… discounted by the plunge in the past couple of months), all of that which  should be taxed sometime next year plus our 21%, should converge to what looks to be a one-way income stream towards the government’s purse. Check that, did I say stream? I mean a white water rapids worth of a Rajang River.

I think I’ll try to make my current tank last till December 10th.

Moral switch? Moral switch?!

I can’t take this. Seriously cannot take this.

Here. Read.

What kinda tax parallel can there be to that? Well, the word “guideline” comes to mind. More of how public rulings, those supposed tax authorities’ interpretation of how the tax laws are to be administered are supposed to be merely guidelines – not something that is supposed to be law, even if it stinks like an undead one. Not something that requires you to bare all in your tax returns in declaring whether you are or are not following their guidelines. Not something that factors into whether you are or are not chosen for their “yes, its a random pick” field audit if you ticked the box stating that you’re not a “guideline follower”. Definitely not something that automatic penalty of 45% of tax for underdeclaration is supposed to hit.

So, to non-tax practitioners… having enforceable “guidelines” that requires additional investments in times when money is tight just to achieve “a moral switch” is old hat to us. Welcome to our world. Now allow me to go puke some blood and buy a dryer with my 10 sen petrol savings.

A Child Shall Lead Us

A friend of mine told me to find some tax parallels to the proposal by Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir for the abolishment of the vernacular school system. I can’t. In the midst of reading the news, I found this article instead.

A tax parallel would be Section 82(7) of the Income Tax Act 1967 stating -

Any person who is required by this section to keep records and -

(a) does so electronically shall retain them in an electronically readable form and shall keep the records in such a manner as to enable the records to be readily accessible and convertible into writing; or

(b) has originally kept records in a manual form and subsequently converts those records into an electronic form shall retain those records prior to the conversion in their original form.

What I’d like to know is the point of the second part of that subsection. Why should we spend money to warehouse our old documents for at least 7 freaking years when an electronic version is more reliable, legible in most cases and easily retrievable? Come on, people. In 7 years time, Terengganu school system graduates would just balk at the notion that we still have to wade through boxes of papers just to prove we spent that cash.