The news on Tourism Tax Bill to benefit Sabah is
not fake news?
The Sabah Association of Tour and Travel
Agents (Satta) on 3rd May, 2017 welcomed Tourism and Culture
Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz’s announcement that the 70 per
cent of the revenue collected from tourism tax which will come into force on
July 1 this year is to be divided equally between Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular
Malaysia.
Nazri has announced that 30 per cent
of the tourism tax revenue would be spent on upgrading tourism infrastructure,
while the 70 per cent would be divided into three equal parts and allocated to
Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia respectively. Sabah’s portion would be 23.33 per cent of
the tourism tax.
Liaw of SATTA said Sabah has 29,720
hotel rooms, which constituted less than nine per cent of the 304,000
registered hotel rooms nationwide.
When winding up the debate for the Tourism Tax Bill
on 6th April 2017, Mohamed Nazri said revenue from Tourism Tax would
be in the region of RM654.62 million if the overall occupancy rate for the 11
million "room night" in the country can achieve 60 per cent.
The Tourism Tax Bill 2017 which
was recently passed in Parliament will exclude accommodations such as
homestays, kampung stays and pusat
latihan asrama (boarding schools), said Deputy Tourism and Culture
Minister Datuk Mas Ermieyati Samsudin.
On tourism, Mas Ermieyati said
they expected some 32.2 million visitors to Malaysia this year.
Tourist receipts rose by 18.8%, contributing RM82.1
billion to the country's revenue in 2016 against RM69.1 billion in 2015
.
State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister
Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said Sabah received an all-time high of 3.43 million
tourist arrivals and RM7.25 billion tourism receipts in 2016
What Nazri said about the purpose of the Tourism
Tax is too good to be real as a certain portion of the tax collected would be channelled
to Sabah for improvement in the much lacking tourism infrastructure.
I have yet to sight the Tourism Tax Bill 2017 as it
progresses to the Dewan Negara.
Isn’t it all national revenue by whatever name is channelled
to the national coffer and part and parcel of the operations and allocations of
the national fiscal budget annually by the Finance Minister rather than that
any other minister has the power to do allocation of the tax in the fashion
mentioned in the press statement?
How much such tax is collected is very dependent on
foreign tourists coming to Malaysia. Has the Minister considered that many
hotel rooms are occupied by local visitors and not as tourists hence such rooms
so occupied would not be levied any such tax?
So this can present problem to the hotels to identify tourists from
local occupants or visitors. By the same argument, how accurate would be the
amount of tax to be collected based on the occupancy rate alone?
It is equally in doubt how would the money/tax
allocated to Sabah to be disbursed to the tourism sector. When and who would be charged with the management of such
fund of say 23.3% portion to Sabah? If
profligacy and mismanagement occurs, then the purpose of the Tourism Tax is
defeated. The new tax can be an issue to
the tourists affecting the arrivals.
Of course Sabah would need a lot more fund from
various revenues so derived from Sabah like the 40% thereof to be returned to
Sabah for decades in accordance to Malaysia Agreement 1963.
With the introduction of GST at 6%, Sabah did not
get anything like 40% of GST so collected on trade activities in Sabah by
resident and non resident (KL based) companies. On the other hand Sabah retains
its sales tax of 7% on palm oil and 15% on gambling tickets when such taxes
should have been abolished with GST.
I hope Prime Minister cum Finance Minister would
confirm that the news as reported is not fake news as the PM warned people not
to be deceived by fake news in his key note address at the 19th Asia
Oil and Gas Conference in KL on 8th May, 2017.
Joshua
Y. C. Kong 10 May, 2017
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