Protect Our Pockets

Recently, all of the major Telcos in Malaysia decide to impose a 6% tax on prepaid lines. Then it got rejected due to the government’s intervention…which I strongly support.

Why add the additional burden to the consumers? Especially now. When times are not that good. Majority of the prepaid users are students, children and those from the lower income group. These groups of customers pay as they use and the users have to pay upfront for it. If the 6% tax is imposed, the customers will have to pay more…a reload top-up of RM 5 will cost RM5.30, a reload top-up of RM10 will cost RM10.60, a reload top-up of RM30 will cost RM31.80, a reload top-up of RM50 will cost RM53 etc.

The only parties that will gained financially from all of this are the Telcos themselves because prepaid users represents the biggest customers group. According to national statistics – DIGI’s prepaid users represents a total of 83% out of their 9.3million customers, Celcom’s prepaid users represents a total of 77% out of their 11.7 million customers and Maxis have a total of 12.8 million customers of which 74% are prepaid users. That’s a lot of money to be gained. The Rakyat is already paying for all kinds of taxes – so please no more taxes! And paying taxes for prepaid lines is totally ridiculous!