PETALING JAYA: The Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Malaysia (Samenta) has urged the government to exempt small traders and micro enterprises from the upcoming e-invoice regime.
“Whilst we are supportive of the implementation of e-invoicing to enhance tax compliance and curb the shadow economy, the e-invoicing initiative must not unduly disrupt business operations,” said its national president Datuk William Ng.
He added that 76.7% of all businesses are micro enterprises, with revenue under RM300,000 per annum. These include such businesses as barbers, food hawkers and sundry shops with few, if any, employees.
“These businesses will be hard-pressed to issue e-invoices. Under this regime, an aunty selling char kway teow will be expected to stop frequently to issue e-invoices to customers. Even if the aunty learns how to do so, it will still disrupt the business and cause long delays to other customers. Some of these small traders may simply quit and close their businesses,” he said
Samenta suggested that any business-to-consumer enterprise with revenue under RM300,000 per year be exempted from issuing e-invoice. Customers of such micro enterprises should be allowed to issue self-invoice to close the loop, instead of mandating this across the board, and causing irreversible damage to the economy.
Ng said the current e-invoicing process remain overly complicated.
“We appreciate that the Inland Revenue Board has been engaging with the industry and tax professionals to standardise the number of data fields required in e-invoices. However, the current 55 fields are far too many and will be a landmine for non-compliance.
“Given that the first batch of e-invoicing will be implemented on Aug 1, 2024, the government still have time to step in to reduce the amount of data required. No system is fail-proof, and as such, we must balance the need for accuracy and being practical to reduce incidences of non-compliance and business disruption,” he added.
