The Business Tax Executive Director of Deloitte Malaysia Thin Siew Chi believes that Cukai Makmur or the Prosperity Tax would be fairer if it targeted businesses that profited from the pandemic.
She was speaking during a webinar on Advocacy Talks with Deloitte: Budget 2022 and Immigration Issues, brought by Eurocham Malaysia.
“This is the simple way to increase tax collection on a one-off basis but they’re thoughts that it would be fairer if this has been targeted to businesses that profited from the pandemic perhaps the health, medical, glove industries, groceries and delivery platform,” she says.
In that way, it would have cut across more than the 250 or so companies targeted.
She says it is estimated the government will collect at least RM3 billion additional revenue from the prosperity tax, suggesting that it could be more if a wider net was cast.
“Targeting companies that would have made super-profits (during the pandemic) as opposed to large corporates whose businesses may have actually been affected by the pandemic but still could be caught under this tax,” she says.
