When I completed my (then) SRP, I pondered what to do next? I chose Accounts stream despite being eligible for the science stream. Why? I love the calculations. After My SPM I had to make another decision , the degree course. I chose Accounting & Finance. Why? Back then, being the firstborn, you wanna get a job more than anything and in 1990, the buzz was for accountants. Hence there I was, bundled up into an air plane and for the next 5 years I had to learn the ways of the accountant.
What happened at the end? Well I graduated and vowed never will I become an Accountant? Why? I like the maths, but could not seem to agree on the principles and the strict adherence to the same.
13 years on, I am glad I made that move.
Don't get me wrong. There is absolutely noting wrong about accountants. They are (or rather were) almost beyond reproach, until Enron and Goldman-Sach showed us otherwise. They are still considered a bunch of intelligent number crunchers, an elite group.
But I just find it that sometimes they rely too much in the numbers.
Yesterdays, the the newspaper, the top achelons of the accounting group in Malaysia came out, calling to hasten the implementation of the GST in Malaysia. Citing that it is the only cure for our malaise of continuous government deficit and in impending doom of the Fitch rating downgrade.
Firstly the government deficit is a two way street, namely Income and Expenditure; the street has a nasty back-alley called "Leakages and Corruptions". It baffles me when the accountants keeps harping about the income side of the street, without touching on expenditure and the back-alley of leakages (which is a pretty wide alley in our case). The silence was indeed deafening.
As I have said it before, I don't mind giving up my portion of subsidy or paying higher tax IF the government has done all they can to be efficient and close the back-alley of leakages. I had that conversation with the taxi driver this morning and the nice man shared the same view. He sees the logic behind it: If the government have shown they have done all it can do on its part, then we will gladly give up what we have for the country. It is not rocket science.
And as I do get it. I get that GST is a much better and fairer way of taxing the wealth/income of the population. GST should be accompanied by a reduction of the overall income tax on the individuals. And that would be great news to me and other tax paying citizens. Apparently our income tax system is not that efficient, resulting in a lot of people able to evade paying tax (which is one of the reason they are calling for the implementation of the GST). Some of us are only getting a little of seventy cents to very dollar we earn. It is a heartache we gladly bear for the benefit of the country. We do get that.
The problem is that you guys don't get it when we talk about better expenditure management and actually addressing the AG's report about leakages.
Instead what we see is a systematic (typical) news reports from so called professional bodies expounding the virtues of GST and how it would be the saviour of our impending woes. Bullshit.
Gone are the days where we, the people, would follow blindly the words of the professionals. Especially after Enron and the likes. We know what are in it for you guys.
I am sure you accountants are independent in their views, but imagine this. GST is a new taxation system so there will be shitloads of new taxation consultation jobs. Wohoo more income.
We also know that a lot of government bodies and all GLC needs an auditors - you gotta manage the relationship there.
We get that and we therefore understand why you might be saying so. But that still does not make it right and deep down I think you know it too.
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