The pandemic has seen SMEs and particularly the retail sector being hit hard. ― Picture by Miera Zulyana
In the five-page memorandum, the four organisations highlighted the importance of businesses in providing jobs and tax revenue to the government, while also highlighting the grave situation that small and medium enterprises and businesses — especially in the retail and tourism sector — are facing due to the unconducive business environment brought about the movement control order and its variations.
Noting that SMEs currently provide jobs for almost half or 48.4 per cent of working Malaysians, the four groups pointed out that the Social Security Organisation’s data showed the highest loss of employment in August to be in manufacturing , accommodation and food and beverages , wholesale and retail .
“This in turn will have a cascading effect on the economy due to the high rate of unemployment and when more companies fold, Government will automatically lose a sizeable chunk of revenue from corporate income tax ,” the four said. They appealed to the government to give conditional financial relief to shopping mall owners and landlords to enable the savings to be used to help retailers in their premises, including by waiving or reducing land assessment tax and utilities payment such as by extending the previously-announced electricity discount to December 2021.
They then urged the government to consider granting tax exemption on individual income tax for tax assessment year 2020-2021, namely exemption on a monthly RM1,000 shopping bill backed by receipts and on a RM5,000 sum to be backed by receipts.With operating costs going up at least 10 per cent to 20 per cent due to equipment purchase and high frequency of sanitisation in line with the Covid-19 SOP, the groups ask for tax relief on such spending during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
The plead is real, loss of jobs already happening to the weaker retailers, soon the big one will need to shed manpower or even close down. Things will be even more dire.
The brick mortar Mall concept relies solely on crowd. The bigger, the better. Covid changed everything. Without crowd, nothing can save you.