COMMENT | Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob downplaying of possible early elections because of rising prices is welcome but even more significant is that he is considering reintroducing the goods and services tax (GST) which was removed prematurely and wrongly by the Pakatan Harapan government in 2018.

The reintroduction of the GST will not only provide a steady stream of revenue to the government and capture some tax lost, it would also compel all businesses to keep good accounting records and therefore help to ensure that tax evasion is less in future.

It’s a tax which is added on to the increase in value of the processed goods or services in incremental steps at every stage of adding value. It requires careful and full documentation of how the value is created and eventual revenue and costs for refunds of taxes on the inputs to be obtained.

Also, a system of exemption of over 200 goods and services, which was put in place when the tax was introduced in April 2015 went a long way to ensure that the poor are not needlessly burdened by the tax.

One of the first things that the Harapan government and then finance minister Lim Guan Eng did after taking power in May 2018 was to remove...