PETALING JAYA: The Royal Malaysian Customs Department is working with the UK Customs authority to help identify ‘GST fraud’, said Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Chua Tee Yong.

He said the UK Customs authority, which has the experience on the Goods and Services Tax (GST), would share the problems regarding ‘GST fraud’ which most countries which have the GST faced.

“The UK government has implemented GST since 1970s, so I think they have quite a lot of experience regarding the tax implementation such as the types of frauds that are common and the ones that require investigations and so on,” he told a media briefing on the GST Hand-holding Workshop here today.

He said the cooperation with the UK aimed to help the Customs Department gather more information on GST fraud, especially on input tax claim and tourist refund claim, which are prevalence in some of the countries that implemented the tax.

Meanwhile, Chua hoped that more traders, especially those affected by the implementation of the GST, to attend the workshop organised by Customs Department and SME Association Malaysia.

Of the 78,000 invitations through e-mail, he said, only 48,000 participants attended the workshop.

He said the ministry would cooperated with SME Corp to organise a workshop in Mandarin to help the Chinese traders.

Currently, he said, the workshops are held in Bahasa Malaysia and English. - BERNAMA