Finally, GST is dead, says Guan Eng
Minderjeet Kaur | August 8, 2018
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The finance minister makes the remark after the repeal of the GST Act was passed in Dewan Rakyat.
DEWAN RAKYAT
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng announced the ‘demise’ of the GST in Dewan Rakyat today. (Youtube screengrab)
KUALA LUMPUR: The controversial goods and services (GST) is officially “dead” after the bill to repeal it was passed in the Dewan Rakyat today – three years after its implementation.
While wrapping up the bill at the Dewan Rakyat, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said: “Finally, GST is dead.”
One of the MPs then jokingly said “Al-Fatihah GST” which was met with laughter in the House.
The new government wants to replace the GST with the Sales and Service Tax (SST).
So far, the Sales Tax Bill 2018 and Service Tax Bill 2018 have been passed by the Dewan Rakyat yesterday and today respectively.
The bills will now be debated at the Dewan Negara which is controlled by BN.
BN has 29 senators, controlling the majority in the Dewan Negara. PH has six senators while other political parties have 16 senators and the remaining 19 are vacant.
SST is a single-tier tax regime, that the government hopes to implement on September 1, and they plan to charge 10% for any taxable goods and 6% for any taxable services.
Lim said earlier today that he could not guarantee that prices of goods would not increase once the new tax was in place but he believed the impact of the SST would be half that of the GST.
A total of 5,443 items would be exempted from SST, compared to GST’s 540 items.
Abolishing the GST and replacing it with the SST was part of PH’s manifesto.
