Taxable amount from company car, petrol card, driver, etc.

If your employer provides you a company car, petrol card and/or car driver, you will notice that an amount will be treated as Benefit-In-Kind (BIK) in your EA Form, which is taxable.

The following table shows how the value of such taxable BIK value is calculated.

The annual BIK value of driver provided is RM7,200.

For example, if you are provided with a Honda Accord 2.4 which its cost is fall under the range of RM150,001-RM200,000, and you are also provided with a petrol card but no driver, your taxable BIK income will be RM7,000 + RM1,800 = RM8,800.

If your tax rate is 27%, then you will need to pay RM8,800 x 27% = RM2,376 for this BIK in your income tax. (Note: the maximum personal income tax rate will be reduced to 26% from assessment year 2010 onwards.)

This amount is normally already divided and deducted in your monthly PCB deduction.

Maximize your 2009 personal income tax deduction

Now we still have until 31 December 2009, which is less than one month time, to utilize and maximize any of the following income tax relief and/or deduction items for 2009.

• EPF contribution and life insurance premium (max RM6,000)
• Education and/or medical insurance premium (max RM3,000)
• Skim Simpanan Pendidikan Nasional (max RM3,000)
• Parent's medical expenses (max RM5,000)
• Annual medical check-up (health screening) for yourself, spouse and/or children (max RM500)
• Course fees for technical, vocational, industrial, scientific, technology, law, accounting, Islamic financing trainings at tertiary or postgraduate level (max RM5,000)
• Books, magazines, journals and other similar publications, either printed or electronic format, excluding newspaper (max RM1,000)
• Purchase of new computer, applicable once every 3 years (RM3,000)
• Sport equipments for any sport activity defined in Sports Development Act 1997 (RM300)
• Donations to approved institutions (max 7% deduction from aggregate income)
• Interest expended to finance purchase of residential property, with S&P signed between 10 March 2009 and 31 December 2010, and the residential property is not rented out (max RM10,000)

Note that if you subscribed for the deferred annuity retirement insurance scheme, you will get an additional RM1,000 relief under Section 49(1) of Income Tax Act 1967. Otherwise, the maximum relief under this category will remain as RM6,000 only. (applicable to assessment year 2010)


Do remember to keep all the relevant receipts for tax assessment purpose.

Malaysia Employment Outlook & Salary Guide 2009/2010 from Kelly Services

The Malaysia Employment Outlook and Salary Guide 2009/2010 from Kelly Services reveals that there is increasing demand in telecommunication, Web 2.0 development, call centre, and some other fields.

It is observed that these fields generally registered a 3% increase in minimum and maximum salary, despite the dampen economic climate during the survey period.

Among the highlighted hot jobs are:

• Credit manager
• Finance manager - investment
• Head of charge cards
• Head corporate credit risk
• Senior customer service officer
• Call centre team leader
• Finance & admin executive
• Safety officer
• Sales manager
• Head of channel management
• Business development manager
• Senior HR manager
• Compensation & benefits specialist
• Recruitment manager
• Help desk analyst
• Software engineer
• Unix specialist
• Logistic coordinator
• Warehouse manager
• Purchasing manager
• Head of quality
• Senior project manager
• Sales engineer
• Civil engineer

Click here to download the Malaysia Employment Outlook and Salary Guide 2009/2010.

You might probably also be interested to read on:

• Result of Robert Walters Global Salary Survey 2009
  
• Result of ZDNet Asia IT Salary Benchmark 2009
• JobsDB Compensation and Benefit Survey Report 2009