Income Tax filing

That time of the year again... where you have to fill in a form and let the LHDN know how much you've earned, how much tax the company has already remitted for you, and how much more you still owe them.

The form seemed simple enough. There's even a booklet to explain what goes where. So, as usual, I left it till last minute to do. And even though my circumstance isn't that complicated (since I have no shares, dividends or other income to declare), it should be straight-forward.

But as you start filling in the form, you start to encounter problems. My main issue was: Where do you put your variable bonus?? My company declares variable bonus for the previous year in March of the current year. So technically, the variable bonus should've been declared last year. So should we include it in this year's tax return? What about the portion of tax that was deducted from your variable bonus?

Well, after much discussion with my dad, we decided that it should go into Section G (for prior year's income that have not been declared). But there's no section in the tax form that requires you to recalculate the tax amount payable on this variable bonus or to determine if the amount remitted by the company for tax was even sufficient! Which works out well for us, since the amount remitted is almost certainly less than actual tax payable, and now the onus is back on the LHDN to recalculate our prior year tax returns and to come back to us on how much we still owe them! What a mess!

Only 2 more days for people to rush to complete their tax forms. I was at Chilli's today for dinner, and actually saw 3 guys sitting at the dining table, helping each other out with their tax forms. Haha... It was quite funny to see. :P At least I got mine done already... better than last year when I actually went to the LHDN office at Jalan Duta on the very last day to hand it in personally!

Those who haven't completed their tax forms... GOOD LUCK!! ;) [It really isn't all that bad la... :) ]