The Prospective of Malaysian Consumers on Good and Service Tax (GST): A comprehensive study on the perspective of Malaysian consumers towards GST imposition

Taxation is an important economic element that can help the government to generate sufficient revenue for the public expenditures. Goods and services tax (GST) is one of the economic tools used by many countries to overcome the weaknesses of the current taxation system. In the case of Malaysia, after experiencing a huge reduction in national revenue in 2009, the government has decided to replace the current sales and services tax (SST) with the GST starting from April 2015. Literature has demonstrated that many questions, opinions and responses from consumer groups arose throughout the implementation of GST. Therefore, this study aims to investigate empirically the perspective of Malaysian consumers toward the implementation of the GST. For this purpose, data were gathered using a questionnaire from a total of 387 respondents all over Malaysia. This study finds that the level of awareness among Malaysian consumers on GST can be considered as moderate. The level of acceptance is also not high. Most of the consumers seem reluctant to support the GST mainly due to its possible impact on inflation.