KUALA LUMPUR: The government is identifying a new mechanism to detect traders who avoid paying the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Second Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani said the mechanism would link the cash register machines of the traders to the system of the Royal Malaysian Customs Department.
“In one system, we can place a dongle in the cash register so that each time the trader punches in the cash register, it will be linked to the Customs system.
“But we may not do it to all traders as it is very expensive, so we have to have specific targets,” he said in his winding up debate on the Supply Bill 2017 at the committee level for his ministry in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.
He was replying to a question from Ng Wei Aik (DAP-Tanjong) on how the government was tackling abuse of invoices by traders to evade paying GST. Johari said among the problems faced by the Customs Department was traders asking customers whether they would to like to bear the GST or not.
He said when a consumer chose not to pay GST, the trader would not issue an invoice and the transaction would not be recorded for declaration to the Department
“So in the long term, we want to ensure traders do not use this method and if there are traders who do so, consumers should report the practice to the authorities,” he said.
In this regard, Johari said the government would be conducting a study on goods subjected to GST and zero-rated goods according to the demand and requirements of the people in the country.
“There is no change to the list of goods and services not subjected to GST at the moment, but a continuous study is being carried out to evaluate the need to add or reduce the items in the list,” he said.
