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The due date for income tax submissions to the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia is drawing closer (30 April 2006). If you haven’t filed your tax forms (Borang BE), or opened your account, you best do so now to avoid the crowd of typical last minute Malaysians.

Opening An Income Tax Account
Welcome to the real world
- Morpheus, The Matrix -

In the mighty words of Morpheus, let me just welcome you to the real world. So you’re now earning a big time income and have to pay taxes. Good on you. If you haven’t yet done so, you can open a new Income Tax file with the IRB at a tax office closest to you. Refer to the list below and head on over.

Official List Tax Offices by State, Branch, and Centre

What you need to bring:

1. A copy of your Identity Card (IC)
2. EA Form issued by your employer
3. Stamps (If I remember correctly, there’s also a small stamp duty of RM2.00

MPAJ Building - Getting There
For those who have received the tax forms, you should have noticed that they have consolidated their collections to a centralised location at the MPAJ building. The idea is to send the forms via snail mail. The biggest fear being that POS Malaysia will screw things up and lose your income tax forms in transit. So over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been asked on numerous occasions for directions to this obscure part of town. Reason being that frequent the area more than most.

Its somewhat difficult to give directions to the place. Especially when the person asking isn’t familiar with the geography of the area. I usually start by asking whether they know any of the landmarks around the place but it usually turns into a futile attempt as there aren’t many landmarks in the area and those that are recognisable are literally miles away (5 miles being the closest one to date).

Area Map

For those who must be at the MPAJ office for whatever reason and need directions, above is a link to the road map of the Ampang area. Specifically, we’re looking for the MPAJ building, located at Jalan Pandan Utama, Pandan Indah. If you’re familiar with the general geography, Pandan Indah is located off the MRR2. There are several options to getting there.

The easiest by far is to travel along MRR2 from Ampang Point. After the first underpass, take the first turnoff to your left. That will bring you into the Pandan Indah area. There’ll be a block of apartments on your left and a Fire Station on your right. Head down the stretch of road and you’ll pass a set of traffic lights with Steven’s Corner on your left (yes, this is a branch of the Steven’s Corner in OUG). You’ll be able to see the MPAJ building from there.

Alternatives
As an alternative to going to the tax office, you can also open your tax file, submit your forms, or ask silly questions about taxation laws and policies during the IRB’s roadshow. The IRB is organising a ‘Bulan Perkhidmatan Pembayar Cukai 2006′ (BPPC-06) roadshow between 1 February 2006 to 30 June 2006. During this period, the IRB will be setting up collection and enquiry booths at various locations across the country.

Articles:

• BPPC-06 Announcement (PDF - BM)
• BPPC-06 Roadshow Locations

Getting The Forms
You get get the BE Form from any of the tax offices in one of the lists above. However, as an alternative, you can also try downloading the e-Filing software. Inside is a very convenient PDF form which can be used to file your taxes. I called their hotline a few days back to confirm whether a printed copy of the digital form (PDF) can be used or not and the lady at the other end (Azah) assured me that it could. I’ll take her word for it. I’ll probably stop by one of the offices tomorrow to drop of my tax forms so we’ll find out soon enough. At the worse, I’ll just have to refill the official form.

The cool thing about the digital form is that the required calculations are automatically done for you. All you have to do is fill in the blanks with the appropriate values. It took WL and I all of 30 minutes to fill out two sets of tax forms. One for her, and one for myself. She’s still ironing out the details but I think its convenient and fast. If you’re familiar with the tax form, you’ve organised all your deductions, and you have all the information ready, it shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to complete.

Direct your enquiries to the tax office via one of the following mediums:
Hotline: 1-300-88-3010
Email: callcentre@hasil.org.my
Or refer to the Official Call Centre list for more details.