Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 27): The Inland Revenue Board (IRB) has officially launched its “Operasi Mega”  (Ops Mega) today, which is its largest operation to date involving 23 tax departments, 12 state tax offices, 37 tax branches, 17 tax investigation branches and a total of 4,219 of its 11,000 strong workforce in the country, in its efforts to reach a higher tax collection of RM134.7 billion in 2018, from its 2017 targeted collection of RM127 billion.

The IRB has already kicked off the operation on Nov 20, and it will go on for two weeks until Dec 1, 2017. The operation will involve tax awareness, tax collection , civil lawsuits and convictions, as well as tax audits and investigations.

IRB deputy chief executive of compliance Abdul Manap Dim, who delivered the keynote at the launch of Ops Mega today on behalf of IRB chief executive Datuk Seri Sabin Samitah who had to attend to another matter, said Ops Mega will be one of the drivers for tax collection in 2018.

“Ops Mega will involve a few big cases. For example, the IRB will be auditing 15 banks that have offshore transactions in Labuan, on transfer pricing issues as there is an unequal distribution of profits between Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan, due to different tax rates in both places,” Abdul Manap told reporters at the sidelines of the event today.

He added the IRB has already taken actions to obtain information from the involved banks, which are both local and multinational banks. He said a further assessment will be done.

However, he declined to reveal the exact amount the IRB expects to collect from these 15 banks, only stating it could go up to a few hundred millions.

As part of the Ops Mega, the IRB has sent out reminders and notices on unpaid taxes and taxes in arrears to 6,560 individual tax payers and companies that involve unpaid taxes amounting to RM434.175 million.

Also, the tax authority has taken civil action against taxpayers who fail to pay the taxes they owe under the Income Tax Act 1967, with fines and demand notices filed in court. The civil action involves 1,393 cases, with unpaid and taxes in arrears amounting to RM120.27 million.

The IRB has also identified 4,158 cases, comprising individual and corporate tax payers, who will be subject to tax audits.

“For tax audits, we can only determine the amount expected to be collected, once the audit is completed,” Abdul Manap added.

As for tax investigations, this will involve 204 cases, comprising individual and corporate taxpayers, with the total targeted amount to be identified later.

As for the IRB’s target this year of RM127 billion, Manap said the tax authority is on track to reach this target.

“[God willing], we will achieve this..to date, we have collected close to RM109 billion in taxes,” he added.

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