The Sabah Hotel Association (SHA) is expected to iron out issues faced by hotel industry players with the state Royal Malaysian Customs Department this week.

SHA president Christopher Chan said state industry players who have registered with the department had started to collect Tourism Tax from foreigners in Sabah.

He explained, however, that certain issues need to be properly verified and sorted out with the Customs Department here.

“I’ve already liaised with the Customs Department here that we will be working with our members to get all the issues that they have and compile it. Then, we will be having a meeting to resolve these issues by some time this week. I think I will only get it (compiled issues) by tomorrow as it is still a public holiday,” he told The Borneo Post here yesterday.

“Only then will I put it together before forwarding it to the Customs Department. We will sit with them to sort out the issues, from both the operation and accounting and the sales contract that has been confirmed much earlier on,” he added.

According to Chan, included in the issues are contractual obligations that had been confirmed before the tabling of the Tourism Tax Bill.

“There is a commitment already so now we need to know whether we collect or don’t collect. I don’t think that is a form of exemption but rather a refund based on the situation and proof of contractual obligations that has been done,” explained the SHA president.

“We have brought that issue up but we have not gotten a firm kind of verification from the Customs Department (here). I am not too sure on how to go about it, so I advised our members to collect first from the tourists. Then later on if we get their refund, we will give it back to them (foreign tourists),” he said, adding these tourists have already arrived and checked into a four-star hotel in Sabah.

Chan said among other issues that have cropped up involved the accounting software programs used by the state industry players.

“Hotels have different software programmers. I need to know whether their format complies or not because not every IT guy is very good in accounting. We need to see whether those format and those reports are in synchronization,” he elaborated.

“If there is a need to, we then need to have some form of standard format for everyone to follow rather than having so many different versions,” added Chan.o

Source:
courtesy of THE BORNEO POST

by Shalina R.

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