Malaysian sales and service tax compliance

Malaysian SST sets the time of supply, the date at which the tax becomes applicable, as the earlier of the following three points:

• When an invoice is issued to the customer
• When a cash payment is made by the customer
• The time when the supply is made

Registered SST payers are required to issue compliant sales invoices which must contain basic information, including:

• Name and tax ID of vendor
• Date of invoice
• Unique, sequential invoice numbers
• Description of goods (nature, amounts, weights, unit prices etc) or services
• Net value of invoice
• SST charged
• Where a foreign currency is charged, the FX rate used

Tax registered businesses must also issue credit notes, with unique invoice numbers.

Unlike the previous GST, businesses will not be able to recover the SST they are charged on B2B supplies from their own vendors for goods. This will produce a compounding of the tax through the supply chain and goods provided between companies. SST on services is only charged at the final point of consumption, so there is no recoverability issue.

Exports are zero-rated for SST, and exporters will be able to make reclaims of SST suffered under certain circumstances.

Tax payers must submit their SST returns on a bi-monthly basis. They may be submitted either via a paper return or online through the RMCD portal.