Malaysian Taxation of Off-shore-originating Advertising Services

Roughly, the algorithm for [ offshore-originating advertising services ] :

LHDN (lembaga hasil dalam negara / income tax department / WITHHOLDING TAX) :

1. Payee has a [ permanent establishment ] in Malaysia? Yes: Payee pays income tax, payer pays no withholding tax. No :

2. Payee has a [ permanent establishment ] in a space where a [ double-taxation agreement with Malaysia ] applies? Yes: see (1. Yes); No :

2.No.A : Payee is selling access to an App, which allows payer to set up their own campaign? Yes: [ the withholding tax is on payee's ROYALTY INCOME ]; No:

2.No.B : Payee is providing services only? Yes: [ the withholding tax is on payee's INCOME].

JKDM (jabatan kastam diraja negara / SST / service tax department / DIGITAL TAX) : 

1. Payee's total sales to Malaysia-located customers exceeds RM500,000 per 12-month period? No: no tax. Yes :  6% 

2.Yes : Payee's invoice specifies the 6% service tax line item? Yes: payee is explicitly passing the 6% charge to the payer. No: payee is still liable to pay taxes. IT IS NOT YET CLEAR WHETHER THE PAYER IS LIABLE OR NOT. For example, if you go to the store and buy a loaf of bread, the STORE OWNER is liable to pay their SST, not you.

Reading up on Avoidance of Double-Taxation Agreements is fun. 

Sebenarnya #RakyatGagal : Bukan #KerajaanGagal

Kebelakang ni ada beberapa pihak yang sibuk membawang dengan suara-suara #KerajaanGagal la, #kerajaanini, #kerajaanitu ... oi, korang tak sangka waktu dulu bila permulaannya status Darurat ... kan kerajaan sudah gagal? Baru-baru nak bising? Sebab sekaranglah baru kau susah. Sebenarnya (.my ya), sudah berpuluh-puluh tahun kita orang hidup dengan kerajaan-kerajaan yang lemah dan tidak sempurna, tetapi barulah korang terasa, sebab akibat kegagalan sekarang amat teruk. Bila ada kegagalan yang kurang teruk, korang buat tak tau je ... ok kan? Cukup makan, kan? Sekarang tak cukup. Habislah kau. Sekarang tolong jangan bising lagi ... buat sahaja apa yang disuruh kerajaan. Kalau nak bising, you tunggu selepas darurat, dan you gugurkan sifat ketidaktahuan anda mengenai perihal pentadibran negaraku. Jangan saja nak gugurkan ahli politik ini atau itu ... gugurkan sifat kau keseluruhan. Mungkin satu hari nanti, tidak beberapa lama dari sekarang, zaman politik baru akan lebih menyeronok. Tapi nanti kita observe lah sikit ... kalau sifat orang ramai tidak beberapa beza dengan sifat dulu tu, cam tu kita stuck saja dengan kerajaan yang sudah gagal, sekarang gagal, dan pada masa depan akan gagal berturut-turutan. Entahlah ... inilah kehidupan rakyat ordinary. Kita lepak je. 

Yawn 73

 PERIOD TO-DO: 

- engage with locked variables; re-engage with priority management tools ... zero-inbox, physical conditioning ...

- debride unproductive shareholders

- get a housing loan

- repair, restore utilities to, and clean up Kajang flat

2021-05-30

I still have limited empathy for folks who indulge in the amusements of

- food

- drink

- other drugs

- sex

- tv

- cars

- families

- empathy

But we all live in the same universe. So political economics has it ... we must learn from one another.

- job1 : incremented coaching of marketing department's implementation of new processes; incremented integration process for a temporary creative lead on an upcoming campaign; incremented corporate communications on cultural priorities for the next month; incremented integration process for potential business development head

2021-05-31

- revised : X2Go on EC2, without swap (regrets)

- tested : X2Go on ARM (success, but need a larger disk to compile Chromium)

0314 hours : a 12-hour forward plan

- home_loan : increment application documentation for most advanced application

- job1 : line up narrative frameworks to pass to campaign creative lead perhaps including story boards

- legacy_job : increment next step in shareholder debridement process

- job2 : clock some serious hours to kick off the week

30-hour day. That was nice.

2021-06-01

First day of lockdown, got a run in.

Sometimes, working life feels like ... we're a bunch of white people, running a Chinese restaurant, in New York, who don't get how weird it is ... to be a bunch of white people, running a Chinese restaurant, in New York. After a while, we'll get the hang of it, I guess.

Super busy day. More achieved in terms of personal development than professional contribution.

- tested : X2Go on Docker (success)

- tested : X2Go on Fargate CaaS (success, but super hacky)

2021-06-02

job2 : recapped work since joining, and proposed next steps

job1 : standing by for emergencies

Tidied : X2Go on Debian on Docker

Failed : Docker build on CodeBuild (need to slowly review IAM between S3 and CodeBuild tomorrow)

2021-06-05

Officially decided that the first programming language to teach any  first-time programmer, who has advanced programming ambitions, is POSIX shell command language.

AWS ECS seems good - does just what it has too and fairly simply.

2021-06-06

Very much tickled today by a bunch of retail investors who were discussing index funds as a wealth strategy. Yes, you're outperforming all the underperformers ... but that just puts you back on par. Not everyone knows what it means to be actually wealthy.

Managed to find time to clean up Github repositories from 9 years ago till the present. Tidied up projects on AWS a little bit also.

Somewhat stressful study session. Digging through specification documents in fluid areas. Such is the web ... making a point to R&R a little bit now.

Had a brief look at the Ruthenium framework code and realised I have evacuated much of it from memory - so it's going to be a slow recovery, in relearning that. 

It is time to firm up other issues, so now backing away from AWS studies and refocusing on the common business that surrounds my transition from operating the cafe to building a career which is outside of that business.

Stressy messy day. What strange ambitions one becomes.

2021-06-07

Clocked just under an hour of work for one job, then took a break. I guess that kicks off the first hour of the calendar day.

I'm feeling somewhat depressed today. However I am not sure why. Here are some possible factors:

- messed up sleep schedule (not a problem unless interaction with people on other schedules is an issue)

- professional uncertainty (non-operational roles in two SMEs, under various crisis conditions, pretty much having the freedom to define my role, but not sure if it's worth anyone's money)

- coordinating residential locations (two rentals, an old flat, and possibly a new flat)

- having forced myself to revise and rewrite some study notes from last year, on the architectural design of ECMAScript in web browsers (thoroughly draining, but good learnings today)

- having revised a JavaScript framework, and being reminded that its technical debt/backlog and potential usability are a herculean task that remains unbudgeted for

- some women I've met recently are starting to express that we don't have much in common (haha, oh no, insurance buyers)

- histamines from bug bites (sheets have been washed)

- musculoskeletal aches from lack of exercise (weights have been lifted)

- having procrastinated for a week on 

[ O ] progressing the egress of shareholders from an old company

[ O ] updating realestate survey information

[ O ] zeroing my inboxes

/

Today is a study-Mandarin day.

omg ... learning Chinese in 2021 is so much easier than going to school and getting caned all the time ...

Just chuck everything to context-menu / auto-translate on mouse-over, two-clicks to thesaurus, 对应, 通讯, 信件, 函件, 书简, 札, one more click to voice over. 

And the thing is, ALL of it could be on mouse-over in an optimised UI.

Definitely going to be one of those old people who's all "back in my day, we did relational database lookups by hand, and it was really slow, so it would take us about sixteen lookups, by hand, to get all the information on this page - of course we didn't learn anything fast ... "

2021-06-08

With regards to MOSTI's second sign-up for the AZ vaccine ... after reading and bantering about it in various groups ... I concur that there was nothing wrong with the web launch. Why? Well, the business goal of the operation wasn't to make people happy ... it was simply to fully exhaust the available supply of vaccines. 

To my knowledge the supply has been fully accounted for.

The popularly bantered idea of RM 70 million - well that's the budget for all software, for all stages of the process, for all time. Not for just one website. If somehow they managed to save money by launching a shitty website UX, that was probably a good call. (One doesn't image that any government procurement is truly efficient from the tax-payer's point of view.)

/

Cleared WhatsApp stars. Texted a bunch of people I haven't texted in years. Hopefully not ill-received.

/

OK - I think I got group muted today for answering "Hot air from Putrajaya," to the question, "What is the greatest source of renewable energy in Malaysia?"

I'm not sure what's more powerful than being able to make a few million people scramble in random directions every few days ... if only we could figure out how to control it.

/

Can I translate generalist as

任何处理者?

/

Someone was complaining that the police cannot simply make up rules as they go along.

So if you go to court, you will get yourself free. But what happens is Malaysians are lackadaisical in suing the police for damages when they are inconvenienced. So that negative feedback loop will one day be complete, but it is not yet a common practice, I think.

/

Seeing is believing. In the pedagogy of crafts, I find it is useful to begin by showing students the complete customer experience, so that they will have a thorough understanding of what [all the work in between] is for. Only after that, should we ask students to pursue [it].

2021-06-10

The past month has been a great privilege, in helping my colleagues to address new roles amidst a crisis. I hope they feel as good about it as I do. A for my second job, I feel I am underperforming, and need to put more thought into it.

2021-06-11

I always say I have girl problems, like "I" usually have to act dumb to avoid pissing off women. Anyway, fuck all  you clingy bitches. I just updated my profile with a headline reminder that I have a 2.5% time target allocation for relationships. Great, refocused. Back to work.🤗

2021-06-12

Well, what was supposed to be a relaxing evening catching up on work ... turned into a bit of a fire-fighting affair, whereby I seem to be the only one who judges that a fire is an urgent problem.7

Did a bit of code review. Just a teeny bit. I don't even remember how these tools work (and some of them are polished tools!) I'm glad I bothered to write the documentation. Anyway, tomorrow's going to be another long day, and paid work has nothing to do with code. So I am going to sleep ...

Very interesting discussion today among lawyers - about whether the Bar Council should discriminate regarding the wealth of the individual members in its professional embodiment.

Putting kubernetes-prometheus-grafana on my to-do list. And SQLite.

So after all the trouble to install DingTalkOnAndroidOnVirtualBox ... Alibaba won't let me sign into two Android DingTalks at once. Now I have to go install OsxOnVirtualBox ...

In 2010, I learnt how to use computer virtualisation to run webservers and integrated development environments. In 2021 I use VirtualBox to figure out how to get DingCock to work on Linux outside the Great Firewall. After all, they do say that as you get older you run into more political considerations.

My first proper Windows OS installation in six years? Eight?

Unproductive afternoon. Expecting more flavourless plumbing this evening.

Second half of the day, much better.

2021-06-13

The next day's code review (after day jobs, and tapping on old business cleanups), not so much.

2021-06-14

Lockdowns are always fun for me. Fewer distractions, more time to focus on work. I think social activities and any kind of systematic cognitive development are fundamentally at odds for a limited set of time.

So, clearly I know nothing about Chinese culture. I was just told it's the Dragon Boat Festival, which is why everyone is posting kawaii pictures of chibi shibari dumplings they made while bored on lock-down.

2021-06-15

Well that was tiring 80 hours. A lot of talking about really daft stuff with really slow people. But that's not the problem - probably it is the shortage of sleep.

2021-06-16

Lots of caffeine resulting in forgetting to breathe. So  applied the recent learning from strength training, to sleep better

2021-06-17

In case anyone's not clear on what HouzKey and other rent-to-own property financing products are about ... these are CALL OPTIONS ... they lock in a purchase price, but you pay a fee.

2021-06-20

Came up with a great startup idea called The Joy of Giving. Maybe I should raise VC and hire a founder to do it.

Oh, doudou is actually a French Creole word.

Deep diving into 2020s video game culture. Some of the art is just ridiculous - it's like someone put a bunch of hostesses from a gentleman's club on maglev boots and got them to wave fireworks around. I guess the only difference from twenty years ago is that this is just massively scaled up now. So they have to make everything look more polarised.

2021-06-23

OMG - after 20 years, I finally have a job that requires linear regression. Time to hit the books.

2021-06-26

Degrees of text-review servicing:

1. Spelling.

2. Grammar.

3. Style.

4. Logic.

5. Research.

6. Expert Opinion.

A great equilibrium has been achieved. Now we're at the top of the curve ... neither advancing, nor regressing in severity. (It looks like a valley, but that is a synthetic construct to hide the location of the peak, implemented by testing less.)

We also have no daily JPN or KKM data on "deaths in Malaysia regardless of attributed cause", and therefore no way to calculate "excess mortality" on a daily basis - but in a few months, you should see some interesting numbers when DOS reports?

My goal for the rest of the day is to get online groceries done, then prepare for a proper work day tomorrow.

OK - bought soap online for the first time. The data is very messy. But this should now be optimised.