The Cold Truth of GST

Reactions of the Malaysian Working Citizens

Abstract

The Malaysian government started to introduce goods and service tax (GST) in April 2015 as an initiative to enhance capability, effectiveness, and transparency of tax management. However, would the taxpayers, particularly the working citizens, be satisfied with the implementation? Would they understand the GST legislation? And would the computation of GST be burdensome to them? This study attempts to answer the above research questions by looking at Malaysian working citizens' perspectives on the matter. The participants of the study were the employees who work in firms that process the GST transactions. We investigated the positive and negative reactions towards GST implementation among the working citizens. Importantly, we evaluated the influence of income on their perceptions. To analyze the data, MANOVA was employed to compare the employees based on their income level. The results presented that the low-income group was significantly different from the higher-income groups regarding their positive reactions as well as the negative reactions. It was concluded that GST had the most effect on the low-income group of employees. This preliminary, exploratory study can shed some lights into investigating more complex issues on GST.