In April this year, Malaysia implemented a new unified Tax called GST which combined existing sales tax values into a single 6%. Some medicinal goods and basic necessities were excluded from GST but oddly enough, prepaid reload coupons did require an extra 6% over the base value of the reload. This caused a little backlash come April 1st and MCMC swayed between including and excluding 6% GST towards a prepaid reload card.

Prepaid Top Up cards are now 6% more expensive, or is it? — "So, today i attempted to purchase a Top Up card from my favorite place but the cashier initially told me to get them somewhere else. Despite that i still insisted on buying the Top Up card there. Then i asked him about the sales of Top Up card for the past few days and he told me that i was the first person to buy the Top Up card from there this month." Continue reading.

Currently, prepaid reload cards still cost 6% more but telco companies like UMobile have reimbursed users with extra calls and SMS to customers. But, the word is out now that the 6% GST will still be imposed towards a purchase of a prepaid reload card in 2016. But here's the big difference, instead of adding 6%, the new system being implemented in 2016 will deduct the GST value from the prepaid value you bought.

So, a RM 10 prepaid reload coupon will only credit RM 9.43 to your account. So, the good news is that you no longer need to carry around a man purse to store all the extra coins to get a prepaid reload and the even better news is that MCMC is the RM 0.57 GST imposed on the RM 10 reload will be credited back to your account within 24 hours. But the catch is that the system will only credit back the GST amount if you are a Malaysia (meaning, you telephone number needs to be registered with a Malaysia IC in order to get the full value of the reload).

In essence, this new system being implemented for prepaid reloads in Malaysia will only benefit Malaysians and foreigners will need to surrender 6% of their reload value. Well, at least the prepaid reloads will not cost what is used to be but like all good things, this scheme might not last long as the documentation only lists this system being valid through 31 December 2016.

To learn more about this new scheme, read the full FAQ list on MCMC's site

ORIGINAL SOURCE: LOWYAT.NET via MCMC