Image credit: Utusan Borneo
KUCHING (July 4): The expanded Sales and Services Tax (SST) will impact people’s livelihoods and threaten the survival of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), said a Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) man.
SUPP Kuching Youth member Raphael Yong said the revised SST not only increases the tax rate to 8 per cent but also broadens its scope to include services such as leasing, construction, finance, private healthcare and segments of the education sector.
He said certain non-essential goods are also now subject to tax rates as high as 10 per cent, and warned of a chain reaction of price hikes that will further burden the public already grappling with high living costs.
“Many SMEs are overwhelmed by system overhauls, cost transfers and regulatory uncertainty, while ordinary citizens are ultimately the ones paying the price each time a new tax adjustment is made,” he said in a statement yesterday.
Yong lamented that prices of eggs and chicken had risen by more than 13 per cent over the past two years, and vegetables by 4 to 8 per cent.
He also said that food inflation overall had reached 4 to 5 per cent, but did not cite official statistics.
“These figures reflect the erosion of household purchasing power,” he said.
Yong said the people have no qualms about the government increasing national revenue provided it is genuinely for the betterment of the nation and its citizens.
He further pointed out that issues such as corruption, leakages in public spending and a bloated civil service continue to strain government finances, with little sign of improvement.
Given this, he urged the Ministry of Finance to stop using the term ‘reform’ as a pretext to introduce new taxes.
“True reform should focus on easing the people’s burden and restoring public confidence in the economy, not covering up poor fiscal management through increased taxation,” he said.
Source: https://www.theborneopost.com/2025/07/04/sst-expansion-will-impact-livelihoods-threaten-smes-says-supp-man/