Ripples from the Sales and Services Tax
By Yeong Pey Jung
January 2019 PENANG ECONOMIC INDICATOR
The historic change of government on May 9, 2018 saw the removal of one of the previous administration’s most unpopular economic policies: the GST. Introduced to widen the government’s tax base and to cover projected government budget shortfalls amid falling oil prices and reduced petroleum revenue, the GST was however seen as the primary reason for the rise in the cost of living in the country.In general, GST imposes the same tax rate on all households, and so, high-income households...
Yeong Pey Jung
is a senior analyst with the Socioeconomics and Statistics Programme at Penang Institute. She is a reading enthusiast and is surgically attached to her Kindle.
