As a cosmopolite, I take the quality of life seriously, and therefore I was pleasantly surprise to find that the budget 2017 contains tax rebates for what traditionally considered as “leisure spending”. As much as I don’t like our current government, and other parts of the budget ( especially the part where the PMO gets an increasingly bigger share of the allocation despite current economic climate, and at the expense of other more needy departments), I have to give them a thumb up for caring– or at least appear to care– about the quality of living for the urbanites.
As shown in the infographic above, the total tax relief for leisure spending is RM 2500, this includes newspapers and magazines, books, Internet, gym membership fees, computers, sport equipment and tablets ( and kindle).
How do I spend on the leisure items?
- I subscribe to a UNIFI 30 Mbps package, at a rate of RM 179/month. Whole year RM 2148
- I go to a gym which membership fee is around RM 120 per month, Whole year RM 2400
- I spend about RM500 per year on books– almost all of them in the form of kindle ebooks because the selection at Amazon is vast and the invoice is easier to keep!
- And I just got a simple kindle 2016( from kindlemalaysia.com of course) last year– that contributes to another RM 530 of tax relief.
- I don’t buy any sports equipment (and I’m not a golf fan)!
So in total, I spend about RM 5578 on leisure items, way more than RM 2500 threshold…. hmmm, after I did the calculation, now I can’t help but feel that RM 2500 is way too little as far as rebate is concerned!
How would you use your tax relief to reduce tax contribution to allocate your resource wiser?
