Parliament has approved the GST Act and it has now become law.

Parliament has approved the GST Act and it has now become law.

“This proved that the government is serious with implementation on April 1, 2015, therefore the local companies whose turnover exceeds RM500,000 must register under the GST regime and prepare themselves with GST compliant software.”

Although the government now was in its first phase (from July until September) of the implementation whereby it would provide awareness campaign and training to the businesses, it also urged them to make an effort to make early preparations to avoid problems come April 1, 2015.

The second phase, from October until December, are when companies are supposed to get their businesses a GST-compliant financial system during that three-month period.

“The third phase would be in the first three months of 2015 where we run the GST trial before it really kicks off on April 1,” he added.

“Come April 1, 2015, GST will replace SST with a 6% rate to be impoased on certain goods and services but not on essential goods namely such as processed meat, cooking oil, sugar and essential services like electricity,”education, healthcare, toll, financial transactions and life insurance. - bernama

iContro Software Sdn Bhd, the local Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software specialist, predicts that businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector, will experience a “chaotic period” in trying to replace their legacy IT systems with GST-compliant ones. However, the introduction of GST is expected to be complicated for Malaysia’s manufacturing sector because the ERP system will need to accurately identify and capture the tax imposed or items exempted at the various raw material processing stages of goods being manufactured. - thestar