Online businesses must pay tax too

By ZAIDI ISHAM ISMAIL
editor@dagangnews.com

The government announced last week week that all e-commerce business must start to pay tax. For transactions between RM200 and RM1,000, a tax of 20 sen will be deducted to the government.

Already heaves of disgruntlement were vented by the online business owners. Among the reasons cited were the wrong timing of the tax due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To the relief of many, the tax plan called eCommerce tax has been scrapped, or shelved? Why the brouhaha? Online business is hitting the roof due to COVID-19.
 

Amazon, Lazada and Shopee among others are laughing all the way to the bank making sweet dough during this time as consumers stay under quarantine and do their shopping online.

There are tales of young teenagers raking in tens of thousands of ringgit just selling smartphone earphones on Lazada.

Online business is the new normal now which rocketed due to the pandemic.

The government needs to tax the sector to provide infrastructure for the industry such as delivery and logistics as well as iinformation, communications and technology platform.

Cybersecurity firm Ofisgate Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Shamsul Bahari Mokmin said there is also a need to beef up cybersecurity.
 

"Thus a huge allocation of the tax revenue will be used by the authorities to ramp up cybersecurity to curb scamming activities," Shamsul told DagangNews.com.

Thus it is natural for e-commerce owners to pay tax to the government as it is for their own good. All companies pay corporate tax and almost all workers in the country pay income tax.

So in light of the situation, why should the e-commerce players be exempted from paying tax?

Tales are rife of young entrepreneurs making tens of thousands of ringgit selling all sorts of products online. This is commendable to nurture the spirit of enterprise among young Malaysians.

Buf the online business sector have to be fair to the existing taxpayers in the country.

It is estimated that only 2 to 3 million of the working population pay tax while the rest especially the self employed such as private sellers have absconded from their responsibilities. E-commerce players must fullfil their duties to the country just like the rest of the country's taxpayers.

The government has already lost so much tax revenue from contraband products such as illicit cigarettes and alcohol.

The e-commerce business should not aggravate the situation by ducking from their civic duty to the country.

Former US President the late Benjamin Franklin had said : There are two things certain in life - death and tax. Enough said.   - DagangNews.com

The writer is former NST Business assistant editor