YOURSAY | ‘Or perhaps try reducing GST to 4%, and reducing corruption to 0%.’

Harapan vows to scrap GST within 100 days of taking power

Legit: As part of Pakatan Harapan’s newly-released plans for the first 100 days of taking over Putrajaya, coalition chairperson Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced that Harapan will abolish the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and introduce a two-term limit for the prime minister’s post.

The abolition of GST and other measures announced are exactly what the people are looking for. These are well thought-out plans and Harapan should sell them effectively to the people, especially the rural folk.

Harapan should also come up with some specific plans tailored for Sabah and Sarawak, as these states are where BN has the advantage.

Mushiro: Finally, a great Harapan logo and leadership structure, and with a big pool of talents like Rafizi Ramli, Tony Pua, Khalid Samad, Gobind Singh Deo, Nurul Izzah Anwar, Liew Chin Tong, Johari Abdul, et cetera.

Harapan has also got its list of immediate priorities right - to focus on the people's woes and to correct the critical nagging issues. The immediate next step now is to hit the ground running.

Harapan without the unreliable PAS is the way to go. The people's hopes are high.

Spinnot: Talk is cheap, and populist rhetoric wins votes.

How would a Harapan administration stabilise the price of petrol (one of the measures to be introduced) when it has no control over the price of crude oil?

How would the new administration fight corruption without an independent enforcement agency and independent judiciary?

Spinning: I think the majority of Malaysians want a government who can help them with bread-and-butter issues. Removing the GST would help, but what will the lost "government income" be replaced with?

Basically: PM Najib Razak made fun of Harapan's promise on GST, but he himself also zero-rated certain items of GST when the public freaked out.

He also admitted GST saved his skin (the hidden meaning is he blew the national budget and made the people helped him cover the big hole).

And he said Harapan cannot get the extra money he did with GST, but didn’t mention that Pakatan states have all saved tonnes of money since coming to government, unlike BN.

Therefore, all these make the PM and Umno-BN what? Liars? Hypocrites? You say that, and they will get mad and cry fitnah.

Experts: Scrapping GST ‘economically nonsensical’

The Observer: Scrapping GST is doable. Cut down on extravagance and corruption. Cut down the size of the civil service which is a massive welfare scheme that disguises the real unemployment rate.

This will save on civil service pensions which contributes to a significant portion of the operating expenditure, and which should be capped at a maximum of 40-45 percent of the national budget, instead of the more than 60 percent now.

This also releases millions of workers into the productive economy and save more billions of ringgit in remittances of foreign workers out of the country.

Plug all the leakages from the taxable sector by cutting zakat payment in lieu of taxes so that there is equal and equitable sharing of the financial burden of the nation.

If all that is still not enough, then sit down and consider a lower GST (that is, going after all the kleptocrats)

Wira: The national budget is RM260 billion. Scrapping GST will reduce it by RM40 billion, or 15 percent of the expenditure, which is about RM10 billion less than the size of our development budget.

Scrapping GST is not impossible but before that, we will have to undo a lot of damage inflicted on our economy by the kleptocrats.

1. Yes, reduce the size of the public sector. Mahathir privatised many government services and kept the growth of the civil service in check. Clueless Najib inflated the civil service employment for political expediency.

There must be a concerted effort to contain this. Scrap or scale back the PM’s Department, which is spending half the money collected under GST.

2. Root out corruption. No more contracts to cronies and rent-seekers. It can save at least 20 percent of all development and supplies expenditure in our national budget.

3. If we cannot reduce GST completely, at least reduce the rate by half until the time we can remove it completely. The shortfall can be funded by a fuel tax. Cap the minimum RON95 price at RM2 per litre. If the actual value is less than RM2, the money goes to fuel tax.

No fuel tax collection if RON95 is more than RM2 per litre. If world crude oil price is good, Petronas gains more and pays more dividends to Putrajaya. If the oil price drops, we pay fuel tax.

Wake Up: All Harapan should do is not doing away with GST but just reduce it to 4 percent for now and plug as many leakages as possible. This would probably a better logical move than to scrap GST altogether.

With the reduction of the GST and plugging of leakages, we may have more money than now to spend for the development which would benefit the rakyat.

Oscar Kilo: Yes, how about reducing GST to 4 per cent and reducing corruption to 0 percent?

Vgeorgemy: We are in full agreement that GST is the best form of taxation even though it hurts the lower segment of the society more than the richer segment.

We are not saying Harapan is involved in post-truth politics to hide the realities of the financial needs of the nation. The rakyat currently feel that there is no transparent system put in place to check the development spent from the GST collection.

We have a feeling that such a tax must only be implemented when we are fully prepared with a transparent mechanism to channel the GST collection to the development purpose.

Currently, it is mainly used for the emoluments and pension, leaving very little for development expenditure.

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