The Royal Malaysian Customs Department expected an additional collection of RM3 billion in Goods and Services Tax (GST) next year through the Customs Blue Ocean Strategy Operations (Ops CBOS) approach which focuses more on informed compliance.

Customs Deputy Director-General (Enforcement and Compliance) Datuk T. Subromaniam said the target was based on the additional RM1 billion collected within four months after the Ops CBOS was implemented last September.

"The enforcement approach we adopted before seemed ineffective. Thus, this time we will change the strategy to a more customer-friendly and based on education to give guidance to the traders who are still confused about the GST system," he told reporters after the launch of CBOS operations at Menara JKDM here today.

He explained that there were also traders who still did not fully understand about GST system.

"There are some traders who are not paying GST correctly, some even pledged GST is lower than the fixed rate, and those who collected GST but didn't make their payment to the department," he said.

As such, he said the operation was aimed at educating the traders who were still confused or did not understand GST, and also at fixing their systems to smoothen the tax collection in the future.

Subromaniam said as many as 200,000 out of the 430,000 GST registered companies nationwide would be visited by the department through its Ops CBOS, which involved restaurants, retailers, building contractors, general merchandise and hardware stores and entertainment centres.

He urged traders who have a problem with the GST system to contact the department and its personnel would visit the traders to lend a hand.

"After this, strict action will be taken against traders who do not comply to GST regulations, including failing to submit a statement or collecting taxes that are not paid to the department," he said.

According to Subromaniam, since the implementation of GST in April 2015, a total of 4,000 investigation papers had been opened with 400 companies having been prosecuted for various GST related offences.

Ops CBOS, implemented on Sept 1 this year, aimed to verify and to audit GST registered companies in addition to provide exemption for companies which voluntarily declared their mistakes or paid lesser amounts, before end of this year. - BERNAMA