KUCHING: Sarawak DAP chief Chong Chieng Jen has called for a rethink on the decision to collect State Sales Tax (SST) on imported tyres.
He appealed to the state government to waive all such SST dating back to 2020 and also to cancel the imposition of SST starting January 2023 on imported tyres.
Chong who is Padungan assemblyman said if on the other hand the state government in insistent on doing so, it should consider postponing it for three years.
“The move to collect the SST dating back to January 19, 2020, is likely to put many tyre dealers out of business because back in 2020, these dealers were not informed to register, and thus, they have not collected such SST from their customers at the point of sale of tyres,” he said.
Chong also pointed out that the profit margin for sales of the tyre is very thin as there is stiff competition in the industry hence to demand the dealers to absorb the SST is to deprive them of the little profits that they earned over the years.
“We sincerely hope that the state government will accede to the appeal herein by cancelling the SST on tyres.
“However, if the government is adamant that the SST must be implemented, it is hoped that its implementation is postponed to three years later to give the dealers and also the consumers at large this three-year breathing space after all we were all hit by the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said in a statement today (Dec 5).
He said he was informed that the SST was fixed at 5 per cent with effect from January 2020 when he met up with some tyre dealers on the imposition of SST on imported tyres.
“Thereafter, it was reduced to 2.5 per cent with effect from January 2021 to December 2022. The tyre dealers were informed that the SST will be revised upward to 5 per cent with effect from January 2023,” he said.
“Despite it being first introduced in January 2020, the SST was not generally made known to the tyre dealers. Furthermore, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most did not register with the State Treasury Department.
“Recently, some tyre dealers were approached by the officers from the State Treasury Department to register themselves with the Comptroller to enable the State Treasury Department to assess the SST payable by them dating back to January 1, 2020.”
Chong said that there are several reasons for his appeal one of them being that the imposition of SST on imported tyres will make the price of tyres the most expensive in the whole country.
“This is because Sarawak is the first and only state in the whole of Malaysia imposing such SST on tyres.
“The higher costs of tyres will not only affect the price of tyres per se but will ultimately cause prices of most goods and services to increase because tyre is an integral part of land transport which forms the main logistic for most goods and services hence its implementation will further aggravate the inflation rate,” he said.
Chong also noted that all sectors of the economy have taken a bad hit from the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 and most of the sectors have yet to recover to the pre-pandemic time.
Thus the implementation of this SST will add further costs to businesses and slow down their recovery, he added.
