Posted by
wetbenang
at
Monday, April 10, 2006
April is always a stressful month for me, and I guess for a lot of other people, too. Macamana tak stressnya, your income tax returns are due the end of the month. If you are a person as disorganised as I am, inilah masanya you nak cari all those receipts that'll entitle you to exemptions -- you know, resit beli buku, resit keraian, your insurance covers, etc etc. And some of these receipts have their own way of disappearing, although through no fault of theirs. Normally you would put them in a safe place so that come March or April, you could just take them out, neatly bundled, for LHDN purposes. But usually your safe place is so safe not even you could find it.
The thing is, however, even if you could find all your receipts, would they really matter? How much would they really "contribute" towards your total exemption? Not much. This is where I get quite worked up, sometimes, with our income tax structure.
You see, I'm a middle income single professional. Of what I make each year, 27% or so (and that's almost one-third of my hard-earned salary) would go to LHDN, purportedly to contribute towards the running of the country and all the benefits or services the government of the day would provide for me and my fellow Malaysians. But in reality, career-driven single people like me always get the worst end of the deal. Who can tell me, really, what kind of benefits or services the government spoons out (and we are talking teeny-weeny tea spoons here) for people like me?
Yeah. Well. Not much, kan? I think it's time that the government appreciated and thought more of people like me. Those who make slightly more money than the average poor, yet not enough to be rich. We need tax breaks, too, just like the married average income earner with five kids. After all, we pay for almost everything else, at full prices. We pay for our (overpriced) cars because public transport is crappy, we pay to watch television because free-to-air (are they really free?) stations are lousy, we pay to use the roads and highways, we pay road tax yet the roads that I take to work remain ridden with potholes. Our public amenities are in horrible state or almost non-existent, our counter services are a nightmare. I mean, give me something in return for that 27% that I return to the government. Something that I can enjoy during whatever little free time I'm not slaving away to earn money to go into my pocket and LHDN's. Not too much to ask, I think.
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