Recently, IRB wrongly sent many CP 500 notices to taxpayers which lead to confusion. In the notice, taxpayers were asked to make instalment payment to IRB. The notice states the amount, due date and number of instalments the taxpayer have to pay.
If you are one of the average taxpayers (including me) that never heard of CP 500 and yet received this notices, then read more to find out what is it.
Goods and services tax (GST) is a tax on the final consumption of goods and services. It is also known as value added tax. GST is a multi-stage tax, which imply that the Government will collects taxes at various stages along the delivery process.
GST is ultimately passed to the consumer even though the intermediaries such as manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers paid the taxes during the production and distribution process. Therefore, GST is not a cost to the intermediaries and it will not reflected in their financial statements as an expenditure.
Below are the most commonly use terms in GST.
If you are like the average taxpayer, chances are you are often confused by the terms “deduction”, “allowance”, “relief”, or “exemption”.
These words are not given separate meanings in the tax legislation but they all operate to reduce your tax bill. It is helpful to distinguish them and to know the meanings usually attributed to them.
A deduction is an expense or “outgoing” of the taxpayer which he is entitled to take into account in arriving at any particular figure of income.
Baltic Dry Index (BDI) or also known as the “Dry Bulk Index” is a shipping and trade index created by the Baltic Exchange which is based in London. BDI is a daily average of prices to transport raw materials such as cements, fuels, grains and metals across the sea.
The Baltic Exchange, global marketplace for brokering shipping contracts, will directly contacts the shipping brokers to assess the price levels for a given route, product to transport and time to delivery (speed). The index is quoted every working day at 1300hr London time.
What is the real value of gold? Gold has industrial uses, especially in the electronics industry where it is used for electrical wiring due to its high conductivity. However, close to two-thirds of its demand is for jewellery, particularly in India and China.
Increasingly, it is being used again as a store of wealth as investors lose confidence in paper money, hedge against inflation or worry about economic and political turmoils. Other than buying physical gold, investors can invest in gold exchange traded funds (ETFs). SPDR Gold Trust, the largest gold ETF with a market capitalisation of over US$41bil, holds over 1,100 tonnes of gold.