Prioritise Smes In Budget 2022 Govt Urged

---

 
The association says a lower sales and service tax would stimulate consumer spending.PETALING JAYA: With Budget 2022 set to be tabled in Parliament on Oct 29, Putrajaya has been asked to focus on the survival issues of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The small and medium enterprises association’s (Samenta) wish list for the budget includes lower sales and service tax (SST), tax breaks and the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) waiver.
In a statement, the association’s policy and government relations chairman William Ng urged the government to lower the SST to a flat rate of 4% to stimulate consumer spending.

He added that entertainment tax should be waived till the end of next year to provide a reprieve to the tourism sector.
“The corporate tax rate for SMEs on the first RM500,000 taxable income for the year of assessment 2021 and 2022 should be reduced to 15%. This would encourage re-investments and promote entrepreneurship to quickly fill the void left by collapsed SMEs.
“Waive HRDF levy until June 2022 and reduce the levy to 0.5% until June 2023,” he said, adding that at the end of 2019, HRDF had RM1.35 billion in retained levy.
“We certainly can afford to exempt SMEs from levy payment in 2021 and a part-waiver in 2022, without jeopardising our mandate to upskill our workers. Naturally, as businesses recover, training and upskilling will happen organically,” he said.
He added that wage subsidy should be extended until June 2022 for all sectors that were deemed non-essential.
Further, he called for the government to stop all mass tax audit operations for suspected tax evasion pre-2019 until 2023.
“Allow our SMEs a reprieve to turn around in 2022 and 2023; and if LHDN wishes to crack down on tax evasion, this can be done when the economy has sufficiently recovered.
“Extend the hiring incentive of 50% wage subsidy for six months to SMEs with less than 100 employees until June 2022 to support SMEs that have laid off their employees or who have frozen their hiring due to the pandemic,” he added. - FMT

---