PUTRAJAYA May 10: Finance Ministry has refunded RM17.1 billion to GST and income taxpayers by 30th April 2019 while RM16 billion from a special dividend has been received from Petronas.
Payments were made following the 2019 Budget speech in 2nd November 2018. In the Budget, the Ministry announced that Petronas would pay a special dividend of RM30 billion to the government which would go towards repaying the GST and income tax refunds of RM37 billion this year.
Minister of Finance Lim Guan Eng said, the one-off special dividend from Petronas has started to be paid to the government in stages, while the repayment of tax refunds to the taxpayers has commenced since January 2019.
“For the income tax refunds, RM7.6 billion has been paid by the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) as of 30 April 2019 and from the total, RM5.2billion has been repaid to 70,205 company cases and RM2.4 billion to1,186,288 non-company cases
“For the GST refunds, RM9.5 billion has been refunded by the Royal Malaysian Customs Department to 76,002 GST registrants as of 30th April this year,” said Guan Eng in a statement today.
Guan also claimed that a total of RM37 billion of arrears in income tax refunds of six years and GST refunds of three years was a failure of the previous government to manage its finance s by withholding taxpayers’ monies without a credible reason.
The Minister added, last year it was announced that the arrears of GST and income tax refunds involved 121,429 GST registrants and 1,653,786 companies, individuals , societies and foundations taxpayers respectively as of 31st May 2018. –Malaysia World New
