Abstract

Various parties including academics, professionals and the society (the potential GST payers) are arguing about the introduction of GST in Malaysia. Goods and Services Tax (GST) or Value Added Tax (VAT) is a consumption tax imposed on the sale of goods and services. The Malaysian government introduce this potential tax mechanism, in order to increase the existing tax bracket and replacing the long-implemented service and sales taxes. With the introduction of GST, the Malaysian government felt it would provide them with the prospect to reduce the rates of individual and corporate income tax. However, do all companies particularly small and medium enterprises (Companies) ready to adopt the systems efficiently? If they could adopt the system, how much their compliance costs involved such as developing new software, human resource training and accounting systems? The objective of this paper is to obtain companies’ compliance costs and its elements and to provide suggestions to the tax authority what are the essential of companies to minimize their compliance costs. The data was collected through questionnaire from various enterprises throughout Malaysia. This paper is expected to suggest a proposal to the relevant authorities on the impacts on those companies. The government should also provide some special tax incentives to compensate the initial compliance cost incurred by small enterprises in particular so that they are not burdened by the newly implemented GST.

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