Comparison between Malaysia Income Tax and Singapore Income Tax 4 --- Tax Filing

It is time to file your tax, in Sinagpore the due date is 15th April every year, while Malaysia is until 30th April every year (for employed tax resident payers)

In Malaysia, we need to get an e-pin to start your e-filing, it is either getting it through your HR or visit the nearest LHDN (Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri) branch when you first year of filing your tax. Subsequent year it shall be just reuse the e-pin and perform your filing. Some of the peple still prefer to file their tax using hard copy, which is still acceptable. For me, I have gone through the transition from hard copy to e-filing, my previous Malaysia company HR did arrange the LHDN officer to teach us and register an e-pin for us when the e-filing system was first introduced few years back...

In Singapore, the IRAS (Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore), introduced a system called No-Filing Service. Basically, you do not need to do anything......haha...If your employer is participated ub rge Auto-Inclusion Scheme (AIS), which most of the Singapore companies do...you need not file your tax for the year of assessment...(to find out wether your employer is participating in the AIS, please refer to IRAS website, under Quick links>e-Services>Other e-Services>e-Submission of Employment Income> Participating Organisations).

Hence, practically we no need to do anything in Singapore for our tax return assessment, because your employee shall key in your annual income...you only need to login to verify and input any additional incomes and your tax reliefs. All these information shall be updated in your IDRS (Income, Deductions, Reliefs Statement). If you do not have any changes on IDRS from the previous year, basically you not even need to login...so simple and convenient...no excuse for you not to file your tax, huh....

By the way, in order to login to your IRAS file, you need an IRAS PIN or SingPass. Although you are not an PR or Citizen, we can apply for either of them...(initially I thought SingPass is only for PR/Citizen, so I have the expriences of applying both....). Both of this PIN can be applied online...(so convenient)...only that SingPass shall be sent to the address on your EP while IRAS PIN you can specified your address. You can get both of these PINs within a week.

In Malaysia, every year, you need to wait for your employer EA form (record your income, EPF, PCB, etc), to dig out your files and receipts, try remember how the filing is done, fill in page by page (although is online), recheck your own calculation with theirs....quite troublesome and tedious...which why all the employee do it last minute and hung the system...

We can said that Singapore's tax relief is much lesser that's why it is easier and more efficient to file it compared to Malaysia's. But Malaysia's LHDN can just keep our previous year records and let us check accordingly. The employer part is also can be made automated as the income from your employment and EPF is no different between your record and your employer's record and should not be altered. This shall improves the process of filling up the tax return file.

(to be continued....)