KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 — Income tax season is here in Malaysia, so let’s see how ready you are to file your taxes.

Have you gotten your EA form your employer(s)? Do you know how to figure out your income tax rate, add up your tax reliefs, and calculate your tax refund?

Have you registered as a taxpayer, logged yourself into e-Daftar, and familiarised yourself the right e-Borang to fill? Do you even know what any of these income tax terms mean?

If you’re still in the dark, here’s our complete guide to filing your income taxes in Malaysia 2019 for the year of assessment 2018.

Who needs to pay income tax?

Any individual earning more than RM34,000 per annum (or roughly RM2,833.33 per month) after EPFdeductions has to register a tax file.

You must pay income tax on all types of income, including income from your business or profession, employment, dividends, interest, discounts, rent, royalties, premiums, pensions, annuities, and others.

So for salaried employees, this not only includes your monthly salary, but also things like bonuses, overtime, commissions, and all other taxable income.

If you’re not sure what counts as income that you have to declare for tax purposes or not, scroll down to our section on statutory income below.

You don’t have to pay taxes in Malaysia if you have been employed in the country for less than 60 days or for income that is earned from outside Malaysia.

Understanding tax rates and chargeable income

Here are the tax rates for personal income tax in Malaysia for YA 2018.

Based on this table, there are a few things that you’ll have to understand. First of all, you have to understand what chargeable income is. Chargeable income is your taxable income minus any tax deductions and tax relief.

It’s very important you know how it works because as you can see, the tax rate you are charged with increases as your chargeable income does.

The more you reduce your chargeable income (through tax reliefs and such), the lesser your final tax amount will be.

For example, let’s say your annual taxable income is RM48,000. Based on this amount, the income tax to pay the government is RM1,640 (at a rate of 8per cent).

However, if you claimed RM13,500 in tax deductions and tax reliefs, your chargeable income would reduce to RM34,500.

This would enable you to drop down a tax bracket, lower your tax rate to 3per cent, and reduce the amount of taxes you are required to pay from RM1,640 to RM585. That’s a difference of RM1,055 in taxes!

Income taxes in Malaysia for non-residents

You are regarded as a non-resident under Malaysian tax law if you stay in Malaysia for less than 182 days in a year, regardless whether you are Malaysian or not.

You’ll still need to pay taxes for income earned in Malaysia and will be taxed at a different rate from residents.

Here are the income tax rates for non-residents in Malaysia.

The income tax filing process in Malaysia

Now that you’re up to speed on whether you’re eligible for taxes and how the tax rates work, let’s get down to the business of actually filing your taxes.

The deadline for filing income tax in Malaysia is April 30, 2019 for manual filing and May 15, 2019 via e-Filing.

You can file your taxes on ezHASiL on the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRB) website.

Registering as a first-time taxpayer on e-Daftar

Before you can file your taxes online, there are two things you’ll need to do first:

1. register as a taxpayer on e-Daftar to get your income tax number and
2. ii) get your PIN number from the nearest IRB branch so you can log in to ezHASIL for the first time.

If you need help on this, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to file your taxes for the first time.

Log in to ezHASIL and access e-Filing

Once you’ve successfully logged into ezHASiL, click on e-Filing to start filling up your Income Tax Return Form (ITRF). Here are the different types of ITRFs depending on how which category you fall under:

Choose the right form and select the year of assessment 2018 (remember, you are declaring your income earned for the year before).

Fill up your income tax return form

Now that you’ve gotten access to the right form, let’s get right down to the bottom of filling it out.

You can choose to view your form (and in fact the entire IRB website) in either English or BM, so language shouldn’t be an issue.

Here’s a breakdown of what your BE form for residents earning income without a business will look like.

Individual particulars

In this section, check to see that your personal details are displayed correctly on the form. Here are a few things to take note of: