KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 24): The government proposed another round of special voluntary disclosure programme (SVDP) with full penalty waiver starting June this year till end-2024.
The Inland Revenue Board and the Royal Malaysian Customs Department will be tasked to revive this programme again, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim during the tabling of revised Budget 2023 to Parliament on Friday (Feb 24).
PwC Malaysia tax leader Jagdev Singh said this is a welcome move, not only in encouraging taxpayers to come clean on their tax affairs, but also to encourage those who were previously not declaring taxes to come forward.
“At the same time, this would contribute positively to government revenues — the previous programme for direct taxes brought in additional taxes and penalties of close to RM8 billion,” he said in a statement.
The SVDP was first introduced in Budget 2019, with a discount to penalties of 10% to 15% on additional taxes for taxpayers who came forward to declare their unreported taxes, said Jagdev.
“This was emulated for indirect taxes in Budget 2022, in which the SVDP provided a channel for taxpayers to come forward and voluntarily disclose any unreported taxes or duties; with 50% to 100% remission of penalty.
“Budget 2023 takes it one step further, by announcing a full waiver of penalties for taxpayers who come forward under the SVDP, which covers both direct and indirect taxes,” he explained.
KPMG, in a statement, said that the full impact of the SDVP is conditional to the full mechanism yet to be revealed, although the expectation is that it could collect more than RM10 billion on potentially higher take-up rates.
“A total of 286,482 taxpayers participated in the SVDP 1.0, bringing in an additional RM7.877 billion of taxes to the government’s coffers that time,” it said.
“With SVDP 2.0 providing a full penalty waiver to voluntary participants (compared to a 10-15% penalty in SVDP 1.0), the take-up rate should far exceed that of SVDP 1.0, and we can expect SVDP 2.0 to collect more than RM10 billion,” it added.