So as most Malaysian’s will know, today is the tabling of the countries budget for 2018. Considering that next year is likely an election year, there’s been many tax “goodies” that have been announced. One, however, has caught our attention.
This particular announcement does affect the geek community in general as it revolves around comics. Since the introduction of Government Service Tax in Malaysia, it’s no surprise that the cost of things have gone up by a bit and comics have not been spared.
However, this new announcement might see comic prices dropping by maybe a little. That’s because the government has announced that there will be no GST charged upon comics for 2018.
Of course, comics weren’t singled out in this announcement as it’s part of an overall group of reading materials that have been “zero-rated” for GST. Aside from comics, subscription publications, magazines and journals have been zero-rated for GST.
Actually, to be a little more accurate, it doesn’t mean that there is no GST for comics, technically there is, however, it has been “zero-rated” which means there is a GST of 0% which is equal to paying no GST at all.
However, this doesn’t mean that comics will be forever zero-rated from GST. The fact that they didn’t say it was exempt means that at any time after 2018, they could possibly reimplement it back to actual GST levels (6%).
So while the cost of living may be going up overall, maybe this is just one small silver lining us geeks in Malaysia will be getting in 2018. That is if we can even spare anything extra for comics and such.
