Gaining insights on tax reduction

UTAR Centre for Corporate and Community Development (CCCD) organised a webinar titled “How to reduce individual taxpayers’ income tax burden for the year of assessment 2021 (tax filed in 2022) in Malaysia” on 15 April 2021.

 

Dr Tan during the talk

The webinar, conducted via Zoom and Facebook Live, was delivered by Faculty of Business and Finance (FBF) Department of Commerce and Accountancy Dr Tan Swee Kiow. In her talk, Dr Tan first shared the criteria for individuals to be considered as tax resident under Section 7(1). According to her, the residence status for tax purposes is determined based on the number of physical presence of that individual in Malaysia in a basis period for a year of assessment instead of their nationality or citizenship. She presented the scale rates of tax that was applied to the chargeable income of resident individual taxpayers and shared some strategies on how to mitigate tax abilities.

Dr Tan sharing some strategies that could minimise tax liabilities in a legal and efficient manner

She then explained tax relief and said, “Tax relief is a way to reduce your chargeable income. It is categorised into fixed relief and non-fixed relief. With fixed relief, you are able to deduct a certain amount no matter how much it incurred; Non-fixed relief depends on the amount incurred and it is restricted to a maximum amount.”

Dr Tan further explained how a married couple should make decisions related to taxes—whether to file for separate or joint assessment. She stated that married people are treated as separate individuals automatically unless they choose otherwise. She mentioned that married couples should elect for joint assessment if the spouse’s income is substantially less due to lower taxable income or business loss. “A married couple should fulfil three conditions if they want to choose joint assessment. Firstly, husband and wife must live together. Secondly, both must have a total income to be aggregated. If the husband or wife is a non-resident, then he or she must be a resident before they apply for the joint assessment,” she said. She also provided some examples in order to better understand the difference between joint assessment and separate assessment. The webinar then ended with a Q&A session. 

 

Dr Tan presenting a format to compute joint assessment

 

Dr Tan giving an example on how to compute the tax payable under separate and joint assessment



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