Malaysia’s prime minister, who is also the finance minister, presented the 2023 Budget proposals on 24 February 2023, with a theme “Membangun Malaysia MADANI.”1 The proposals overall reflect the government’s drive for a reform agenda focusing on fair, equitable, sustainable, and people-led economic growth and development.
This year’s budget offers a reduction of the individual income tax rate by 2 percent for middle-income resident individuals, but increases the tax rate by 0.5 percent to 2 percent for higher-income resident individuals. This is part of the MADANI key drivers under “Care and Compassion” for supporting vulnerable groups. There is also an increase, an extension and an expansion of the scope of existing tax reliefs. (For coverage of last year’s budget, see GMS Flash Alert 2021-284, 22 November 2021.)