Goods and Services Tax Compliance Initiatives : Examining Corporate Taxpayers’ and Regulator’s Responsibilities in Malaysia

Abstract

The responsibilities of Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMC), together with corporate taxpayers, are crucially important to achieve an elevated level of compliance for Goods and Services Tax (GST). Both parties play significant roles to ensure that the implementation of GST would run smoothly. Compliance awareness, knowledge, attitude, audit and other factors contribute towards efforts for corporate taxpayers to be consistently compliant for every submission and payment. Unfortunately, compliance is not easily achieved, as the public would have thought. Various training, reading, timing and costing are required before business owners can successfully implement GST into their accounting system and be adapted with the process. This paper presents an empirical analysis of GST activities from regulator (RMC) and corporate taxpayers of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in managing compliance activities. SMEs were selected as samples because they represent more than 90% of GST registrants in Malaysia. Findings from semi-structured interview with business owners, as well as focus group discussion with RMC, indicated that both parties strive to ensure that the level of GST compliance is