A tale of 6%

6% : a very familiar figure when receiving bills be it astro, dining out, tm bill and the rest. Most of us don't like it but like any law abiding citizen, we are obligated to pay the service tax that is imposed by our Malaysian government upon every end user in the country.

So when the news that telco companies have decided to impose the same tax on prepaid users, there was of course a major uproar to it. For many years, in the name of competition, the telco's have absorbed this cost and have not charged the end user.

Is it wrong to pass the buck back to the end user now?

While thinking about this, do take note that post paid users have always been paying the service tax from long ago and even your tm landline has 6% imposed on the bill.

My personal opinion would be. WHY NOT?

Honestly speaking, as much as I don't like the imposed tax, we should not also deprived others of what is due to them. Of course one may say that this are huge corporate giants and making them richer at the extend of the poor is not right. However, using this philosophy only on the telco's are absurd. If that is the real case then the 6% tax should be abolished all together by all mega companies like Astro, TM, TNB and the likes. Just because the telco did not charge the 6% do not mean that it is our right to demand for it not to be charged in the future.

We are all spoilt brats blaming the company for it.

Instead, if indeed this is going to be a big issue, we should at least point our fingers at the government which imposed this tax upon us in the first place. Get them to waiver the 6% altogether. But wait, doing this would probably make the government bankrupt and we would then turn into another Greece. This is really a chicken and egg dilemma. On one hand the rakyat is feeling the heat from stagnating pay and inflationary pressures, the telco's also find themselves with deprived revenue for probable expansion to their business. This are all honest companies that have indeed provided us with good value. We have never had rates this cheap for our mobile usage ever and I am sure rates will only get better in the future.

I definitely think it's not right for the government to put their feet into telco's business measures. They didn't do anything when announced their rate hike, they shouldn't do anything now either. The government should instead plan austerity measures to help the rakyat in this lean times.

Stop the rot from it's roots.



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