KUALA LUMPUR – Former prime minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said he wanted to reintroduce the goods and services tax (GST) when his government was in power, as he shot down a DAP lawmaker’s accusations that he had failed to do so.
Ismail Sabri (Bera-PN) said in the Dewan Rakyat today that the current unity government should consider bringing back the GST to improve the nation’s fiscal condition.
“To avoid increased cost of goods due to an incompetent taxation system, I agree with the suggestion put forth by several others to revive GST under any sort of name,” he said during his parliamentary debate on the royal address.
“It has been proven that (GST) is a more transparent form of taxation and will be able to balance the government’s fiscal system through revenue collections.”
Interrupting Ismail Sabri’s speech, DAP’s Chong Zhemin (Kampar-PH) questioned why the former did not reinstate GST during his tenure as prime minister under the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration from 2021 to 2022.
“Why did you not re-introduce GST when you were prime minister? If you really think that it should be implemented, why didn’t you do it then?” Chong queried.
In response, Ismail Sabri said: “I think you (Chong) didn’t read our (previous) media statements.”
“We issued statements then that the cabinet had already discussed the issue of (reintroducing) GST and was looking at refining the matter,” the former prime minister added.
The GST was introduced in 2015 by the then-BN government at a rate of 6%, and was later terminated and replaced with the sales and service tax (SST) by the Pakatan Harapan administration when it took power after the 2018 general election.
Ismail Sabri in 2022 said that the implementation and effects of the GST were being studied before a decision was made to revive it, stressing that no other nation besides Malaysia had reverted from GST to SST.
He also claimed that the nation lost RM20 billion in annual revenue after the GST was abolished and replaced with the SST. – March 7, 2024