Introduction

The idea of introducing a flat consumption based Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Malaysia has been floated since 1989. It now seems as though this may become a reality in the 2014 Budget, with implementation beginning within 18 to 24 months at an initial rate of 4 % on the supply chain. The plan to overhaul the tax system has begun to gain momentum as the government deals with an increasingly weak economic outlook, combined with global uncertainty.

While not at the emergency levels of many advanced Western European economies, Malaysia has not run a structural budget surplus since the Asian Financial Crisis hit in 1997. Federal government debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) currently sits at 55.4 %.1 For the time being, this is manageable, but it is the government’s ability to reign this spending in, as well as lack of budgetary reform that has led ratings agency Fitch to downgrade Malaysia’s credit outlook to negative this year.
The government’s recent 20 sen cut to the fuel subsidy and increasing speculation of a GST framework to be included in the upcoming budget can be seen as evidence that they are trying to remedy both structural and cyclical economic challenges. Furthermore, for far too long there has been an overdependence on the revenue generated from oil and gas dividends, which currently account for over a third of total government revenues. 2

A GST offers a single unified system where the tax burden is equally shared between the services and manufacturing industries, whilst simultaneously broadening the tax base. This will help to minimise tax exemptions as well as the compounding effects of pyramiding tax, tax erosion, transfer pricing and value shifting. In the current economic climate, it will also ensure a level of stability, as a GST is less susceptible to the fluctuations inherent in commodity markets.
As evidenced