Filing Income Tax returns for 2010 - deadline coming soon!

Though the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) or Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri (LHDN) had already started sending out income tax return forms for the assessment year 2010 way back in January, my company payroll only managed to prepare our EA form much later. Which of course, meant that the typical Malaysian, like myself, would actually start the returns filing activity as close to the deadline as possible....

Now, each year, wage earners like me are given until the end of April to file in our returns for the previous year. For those who run their own businesses, the deadline is at end of June. This date includes paying up any excess amounts after deductions.

Up until many years ago, this was all done manually, with hard copy forms sent via post, which everyone in the entire country had to fill up and mail back to the centralized LHDN processing center in Pandan Indah, Kuala Lumpur.

As human nature would have it, many people wait until the eleventh hour to do something important. Ironically, the more important the task, the closer to deadline it gets started! Those days, this sudden rush would put a strain on the postal service, and somehow or rather always made the news.

Since 2006, the LHDN introduced online income tax filing to the Malaysian taxpayers (to file in their returns for 2005). Hard copy forms remain in use, till today, as adopting this requires some computer literacy and of course, access to computers with Internet access.

Of course, going electronic had little effect on *human nature*, so instead of long queues at the post office and couriers (DHL/Fedex), late e-filers encountered extremely slow access to the LHDN e-filiing site.

Unlike *some other payment activity* in Malaysia, where you can get lucky and actually get a discount for late payment (a topic for another day, perhaps), there is no advantage to filing in tax returns on the very last day, or even after the deadline. So, if you haven't done so already, do make it a point to go to the LHDN e-filing site at https://e.hasil.gov.my/ as soon as possible to file your returns online, and save yourself a lot of hassle!


[UPDATE - 20 April 2011] - Better hurry up, Malaysians! More than 1.5 million folks have yet to file in their return yet! http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/4/19/nation/8510394&sec=nation