KUALA LUMPUR: Pakatan Harapan (PH) believed that the abolished goods and services tax (GST) would be reintroduced if Barisan Nasional (BN) won Putrajaya in the 15th General Election (GE15).
PH communications director Fahmi Fadzil said given that caretaker Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Aziz had implied the return of GST, it was only appropriate for BN to confirm its intention on the matter.
Although Tengku Zafrul had dismissed it, saying the government had not discussed the reintroduction of GST, Fahmi pointed to the former's remark on the day of the 2023 Budget tabling.
After the tabling of the budget, in response to a question by the media on the plan to reintroduce GST, Tengku Zafrul said the idea would be discussed next year, depending on the state of the economy then.
"GST will 100 per cent be reintroduced (if BN returns to power). Tengku Zafrul has implied that this is something they are seriously looking into. It is as though there is no recognition of PH's mandate after winning GE14, which was to remove GST.
"We saw that the implementation was problematic. If anyone intends (to reintroduce GST), they must make it clear now. If BN or Zafrul wants to bring back GST, it must be in the BN manifesto.
"Don't try to sneak it in like in the middle of the night and expect people to just swallow it. Be clear, be forthright."
He added that BN needed to understand the situation the public was in.
Given the negative impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic and its aftereffects, he said reintroducing GST would be the worse solution as it would only empty the people's pockets.
"Everyone is expecting (tougher) times next year. You can't have this kind of taxation system at this current juncture when everybody is suffering.
"It (reintroducing GST) means, whatever you are paying right now for your roti canai, probably RM1.50 or RM2 in some places, you will have to pay more because as we have seen, one of the biggest pitfalls of GST was the refund system."
Malaysia's GST of six per cent was introduced in 2015 during former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's administration, but it was scrapped three years later after PH took over Putrajaya.
PH's pledge to do away with the consumption tax was one of the key agendas in its manifesto for GE14, which saw BN being toppled after more than six decades in power.
Ismail Sabri, who is caretaker prime minister, in an interview with Nikkei in May this year, had said the government was keen on reintroducing the tax despite its unpopularity.
He said Putrajaya had limited options, and it had lost RM20 billion in annual revenue after the tax was abolished.
He also said the government would target a GST rate that would not burden the people, but was not so low that it would "defeat the purpose of expanding tax revenue".