KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 5 ― Celcom Axiata Berhad welcomed today the government's decision to exempt prepaid mobile phone services from the 6 per cent tax under the Sales and Service Tax (SST) regime from tomorrow onwards.
The telecommunications company's chief executive officer Mohamad Idham Nawawi said this decision would have a positive impact on many Malaysian prepaid mobile users.
“Celcom has already provided tax rebates to Malaysian customers who have purchased prepaid plans from 1 September till 5 September 2018, in the form of on-net call freebies as stated on our website,” he said in a brief statement.
He added that the 6 per cent SST still applies for non-Malaysians and other Celcom services.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said this morning that he had ordered that prepaid telco services that are provided to Malaysian customers be exempted from the service tax from September 6 onwards, noting that this exemption will see customers getting full credit value when they make prepaid reloads.
The ministerial order comes a day after Lim warned the country’s telecommunications companies that he would intervene if they did not immediately stop charging the six per cent service tax on prepaid card reloads.
He said prepaid card reloads were clearly exempted from the list of consumer goods and services under the new SST regime that was introduced on September 1.
In a morning talk show on RTM yesterday, Lim said the government wanted to provide a guarantee to mobile phone users that if they reload RM10, they should get RM10 of credit without any deduction.
Lim noted a number of consumers had complained of being charged the tax when purchasing the reload cards, which meant they received less value than paid for.
