Why are surplus tax refunds taking time to be refunded to companies?

As of 30 June this year, the total tax surplus tax refund paid out by the Inland Revenue Board amounts to RM9.35 billion.

The amount involves 3,013,911 tax payers.

Of this number, 1,076,503 tax payers received a full refund amounting to RM2.73 billion.

This was revealed by Finance Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in his written reply to Lim Guan Eng (PH-Bagan).

Lim had asked for the latest figures of surplus tax collected and not paid by the IRB to businesses that made average surplus profit and the need for IRB to take up to five years to make the refund instead of one year.

“Tax refunds for companies involve a bigger amount and is given out based on priority. This is done to ensure all eligible tax payers receive at least partial refund within a year and the balance would be settled based on the government’s financial position.”

The IRB has taken four steps to speed up the tax refund repayments:

i) First In First Out concept
ii) redistributing payment in a balanced manner based on the outstanding period.
iii) making full payments for individual outstanding refunds
iv) making repayments to all tax payers according to a fixed amount.