More than RM50 million in tax arrears have not been collected from expatriates who have left Malaysia since 2012, revealed the Inland Revenue Board (IRB).
Its chief, Sabin Samitah, said most of them were from the services sector and had either falsified real wages in the expat application form or declared a lower wage than what they actually received.
Many also abused the student pass and did not attend college but instead carried out businesses and did not declare the income from their businesses or reported them to the board, he added.
“We can also this from the amount of remittances to their countries of origin and their luxurious lifestyle in this country,” he said.
Sabin added that the IRB was in talks with 75 countries that had signed the Double Taxation Agreement to recover the tax from the expatriates.
For this year, the IRB will take action against employers or sponsors who fail to carry out their responsibilities to deduct the tax of foreign workers before they return to their respective countries.
