PUTRAJAYA, Feb 24 — Businesses can claim back their 10 per cent sale and service tax (SST) paid to the Customs Department on their leftover stock from April 1, Datuk Ahmad Maslan said today.

The deputy finance minister said the move is to prevent consumers from being doubly charged after the 6 per cent goods and services tax is introduced in two months.

“We have a special allocation for business to claim products with SST if they still have leftover stock after April 1,” he told reporters after a closed-door briefing to Wanita Umno at the Marriott Hotel here.

He said government officers will be sent to physically check on the claims to weed out fraudulent claims.

“We will check, we won't simply just give. That's why input tax credit we have 14 days and 28. This is for people to claim, online 14 days, manually will take 28 days.

“But this will take several months because we need to send officers to check on the claims,” he said.

The Pontian MP stressed that businesses that planned to apply for the claims must deduct the tax from their goods first, before adding on the new GST.

Failure to do so would be committing an offence, he warned.

According to Ahmad, some 50,000 companies have yet to register with the Customs Department.

He said they were at risk of being fined RM15,000 after the deadline.

When asked if there will be a grace period before action is taken against businesses who failed to adhere to the new system accordingly, he said it would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

“Ignorance cannot be used as a reason to avoid facing the law. If there are genuine errors, perhaps we can forgive in certain cases but I don't want to announce it.

“Since this is new, we will be considerate,” he said.