During a parliamentary session earlier today, the ruling government said that it had collected approximately RM428 million via the Digital Service Tax. Abdul Rahim Bakri, the Deputy Finance Minister I, mentioned the amount while debating the Digital Service Tax Bill 2020 at Dewan Negara, after it was raised by Senator N. Balasubramaniam.
Bakri also mentioned that while the tax bill was imposed on local digital service providers, the government was also making efforts to impose the same tax on foreign digital service providers as well.
To recap, the Digital Service Tax bill was first introduced by the previous administration in 2019 during Belanjawan 2020, an annual event when the ruling government presents plans for the national budget in the following year. Under the Digital Service Tax Bill, online services such as Netflix , Spotify, and digital distribution platforms like Steam are subjected to a 6% tax. That went into effect at the start of this year.
In regards to Steam, the digital platform has already said that the applied tax would be included within a game’s full price, and would not be listed as a separate charge on the bill.
You can watch the video of the parliamentary session via the official Parlimen Malaysia YouTube channel, or you can watch it here. The question pops up around the 4:08 timestamp, but do note that at the time of writing, the session is still ongoing.
