The Inland Revenue Board (IRB) believes it can collect higher income tax this year following its capacity to venture into "hidden resources" under the blue ocean strategy, chief executive officer Datuk Dr Mohd Shukor Mahfar said.

A He said the confidence stemmed from IRB's success in collecting the targeted RM109.09 billion in total tax collection last year. 

The IRB could now detect taxable operations that were not reported based on the figures used by the Economic Planning Unit in the Prime Minister's Department and the Finance Ministry with regard to the Gross Domestic Product, he said. "I feel the RM109.09 billion targeted by the government is just the tip of the iceberg despite the sluggish economic climate," he told reporters after opening the RM140 million Kuching campus of the Malaysia Tax Academy. Mohd Shukor said the country's economic growth and petrol price hike contributed only 30 per cent to tax collection while the remaining 70 per cent was from motivation and internal strategies to identify obstacles in daily work. 

In Sarawak, he said, the IRB collected RM3.5 billion last year from taxpayers using the address in Sarawak. However, taxes for multinational companies operating in Sarawak, but based in Kuala Lumpur would be collected in the federal capital, he said. On the one-off RM500 1Malaysia People's Aid, Mohd Shukor said the IRB, as the entrusted agency to register eligible applicants, has not received any directive from the Finance Ministry to extend the Jan 10 deadline, particularly for people living in remote and interior areas. 

The IRB has so far received four million applications, he added. Meanwhile, the Kuching campus of the Malaysia Tax Academy started receiving course participants from throughout the country since April last year. It has a tax investigation training centre, forensics laboratory, legal service training centre and Kuching income tax investigation branch.

Source: Bernama