Tag: federal budget

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Economics Education Politics & government

[2440] Opposing double deduction for scholarship abroad

The government intends to give corporations double deduction for sponsoring students. While it is great to encourage the private sector to give out scholarships to students so that there are fewer reasons for government to do so, I think the double deduction is a bad idea. There two reasons.

First, I am with the idea that the government is spending too much money on sending undergraduates abroad. When the destination countries are developed countries like United States and the United Kingdom, the scholarship program as a whole will be awfully expensive. If you are to attend the University of Michigan as a government-sponsored student in a typical 4-year undergraduate program for instance, the tuition alone can surpass half a million ringgit, just like that.[1]

Of course, Michigan is not your typical university and there are of course cheaper universities out there in the US but most of those cheaper universities do not bring value to public money when there are better alternatives closer to home. You do not want to pay half a million ringgit to send something to a school like, oh, I don’t know, Ohio State University maybe?

Okay, that is uncalled for but you get my drift. OSU is a good university, only that Michigan is way better, in every single way. Including, thank the heavens, in football too!

I prefer the government to use the money on improving the local tertiary education instead. Money of course can only do so much. There are other factors like freedom on campus (Malaysian public universities seriously lack this) to develop a free inquiry culture but money does matter.

There are exceptions to my opposition to public scholarship to abroad, but these exceptions are so small that even putting them up while drastically reducing the program will free up tons of money for other uses. In the double deduction policy, since awards for places abroad is costlier than local spots, companies have the incentives to send students abroad, at taxpayers’ expense.

Secondly, the double deduction reduces government tax revenue only to do what the government is doing in the first place. It is only fee-shifting or paper-shifting so to speak. It does not matter who spends it because in the end, it will use taxpayer money. If the number of awards—for local and overseas spots—stays the same, then this policy will only increase the cost, explicitly or implicitly, of maintaining the policy, explicitly or implicitly. When the result is the same, why do it convolutedly? Such an accounting trick will add more cost than necessary to the government.

If the government is reducing scholarship award, then the money will flow out anyway before it gets in. It will show lower revenue and lower spending and then, maybe, smaller government. That is only because of that accounting trick. Like all accounting tricks, it is superficial.

At the very least, I think the double deduction should come with a caveat: only for sponsorships at local schools. If anybody wants to send somebody abroad, they should use their own money entirely.

Or otherwise, maybe just reduce corporate and service tax altogether so that this problem with double deduction would not be a problem to start with. That would truly be more substantial than that particular 2012 budget provision.

Or yet another or-case, the government should only give out less than 100% deduction while reducing the number of public scholarship awards to abroad.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
[1] — [Office of the Registrar. Full Term Tuition & Fees. University of Michigan. Accessed October 9 2011]

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Economics

[2438] Malaysia could have smaller deficit

The 2012 budget is an election budget. From civil servants to police officers to students to teachers to the armed forces, the whole public sector workers, even pensioners, will get their own share of handouts next year if this budget is passed, which it will.

With all the handouts, it got me thinking. We could do better with the federal government’s fiscal deficit. A lot of this handouts with the exception of the 2% annual increase of salary for civil servants and free education are one-off gifts. If those gifts were not made, Malaysia would have smaller fiscal deficit.

I will expand this thought for my column at The Malaysian Insider.

Categories
Economics

[2104] Of the government continues to expand under the 2010 federal budget

As a libertarian that I am, I can only sigh after reading the 2010 federal budget speech delivered by the Finance Minister.

I begin from a point deep in the realm of skepticism. I never actually believe any government in Malaysia — now or in the near future, neither Barisan Nasional nor Pakatan Rakyat — would largely retreat from the marketplace to leave the market to its own device in most cases. There are simply too many political considerations that go against the notion of free market here in Malaysia.

Firstly, businesses are politically-connected to make the government pro-business. In fact, the government itself is involved in businesses through its oligopolies to crowd out private initiatives. This has not even considered the erased line between the government and Barisan Nasional, where public properties are used for personal and political gain. For the government to touch itself openly is inevitable. That is the likely result in the case of conflict of interest, which is hardly surprising at all. There is no decency anymore these days.

Secondly is the developing entitlement mentality. Fuel subsidy is a right. Free highway is a right. Scholarship to universities abroad is a right. Bonus is a right. With such mentality and with both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat racing on this front, government expansion is the only logical way forward. We have seen how the Islamization race between UMNO and PAS ended. It does not take a leap in imagination to picture the end result of the race between Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat to the left.

Early in the speech, the Finance Minister mentioned the scope of government intervention and it is wide. In his own words, the government ”will transform Malaysia through a comprehensive innovation process, comprising innovation in public and private sector governance, societal innovation, urban innovation, rural innovation, corporate innovation, industrial innovation, education innovation, healthcare innovation, transport innovation, social safety net innovation and branding innovation.”

That is a mighty goal, especially given that many governments perform poorly in the area of innovation when put head to head with the free market.

No matter. The government knows best and god saves us all.

Regardless of the budget, a new industrial policy that necessarily calls upon government intervention appears imminent. The talk of a so-called new economic model or really, a central planning exercise with new emphases has been going on for months now. Different goals, same paradigm.

The best symbol of paternalism available in the budget that a layperson can identify with is the proposal to charge an annual lump sum fee on credit cards. The Finance Minister claims that this is done to promote prudent spending. It is, as if, all individuals are doomed to spend all of their money dry.

Never mind that the government itself is spending imprudently. I wonder if an individual with his or her own money would buy a laptop priced at RM42,320. Whatever the answer, we know that some government institution has done that. Open up the auditor report. Year in and year out, it is the same old story. Yet, individuals have to suffer paternalistic attitude from a hypocritical government, which is convinced that individuals cannot manage their finance.

On the contrary, the government should really worry about its own financial status first rather than trying to tweak individual behavior, from savings to spending. Its revenue is going down and its expenditure is growing, the abnormal spending caused by the stimulus package notwithstanding.

The government seems to be addressing that problem by introducing goods and services tax later in hope to increase its revenue; not in 2010 but maybe in 2011. I personally like such consumption tax, but only if it neutralizes amount of theoretical loss due to income tax. To have both is to reduce welfare of individuals. Other than that, the government is even preparing to rents out some of its premises to the public, among other things.

The reform effort at the fuel subsidy regime is likely to help but it is unclear how that would be effective in rectifying government finance in light of expanding roles of government in the country.

The size of government expenditure — regardless whether it is caused by corruption, incompetence or by simply misguided conscience to help — needs curbing, if the problem of government finance is to be effectively addressed.

With a little luck, such retreat will give the private sector more space to flourish and contribute to government coffer, in the long run.

Yes, in the long run, we are all dead as Keynes wrote. Remember however that we are here now because of quick fixes — get the government to do it.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on October 27 2009.

Categories
Economics

[2100] Of credit card service charge; the government should look into the mirror

I am in no position to give full opinion on the proposed 2010 federal government budget tabled earlier today. That is mostly because I need to read the whole text first. Nevertheless, I feel strongly against the idea of imposing service charge on credit card; as stated by the Finance Minister, the purpose of the charge is to curb reckless spending by individuals.

According to the budget, RM50 is to be charged on main credit card while RM25 is to be charged on each additional credit card. I would assume the fee will be charged to new users of credit cards during application period. I am unsure how preexisting users will be charged.

But no matter because as long as it is charged as fixed amount annually, here are my first thoughts that lead me to disagree with it.

Firstly, the charge is too small to be significant and on top of that, it is a yearly charge. If a person cannot afford to pay RM50, I would think that the credit card company would notice the financial status of the user and refuse the user the card. Therefore, the effectiveness of the charge deserves skepticism. If credit card companies do not filter their customers, then the companies deserve to go under.

Secondly, this is a blanket policy. Individuals with good and bad spending patterns are being punished. Of course, it is just RM50 but it is the idea of being punished for other individuals’ stupidity that makes this maddening. Recklessness should be punished while prudence should not. The free market already provides for that mechanism: bankruptcy. It works superbly. But the government has other idea it seems.

Thirdly, if RM50 is significant, which I really doubt, it mainly punishes those in the middle income bracket and more so of those in the lower income bracket who use credit cards to smoothen their consumption pattern instead of committing “reckless spending”.

Fouthly and more importantly, it suggests that the government knows better than the individual in managing their finance. Can you say, paternalism? Is the era of government knows best over? I think not.

Finally, the intention of introducing the charge, so reasoned the Finance Minister, is to curb reckless spending by individuals. To that which I will say, the government should look into the mirror.

Categories
Economics

[2097] Of first comment on the proposed federal budget by DAP: culture of entitlement

The Democratic Action Party released its proposed 2010 federal budget this week.[1] This is definitely a good move as it brings substance to debate. It gives all of us an opportunity to debate on policies rather than engaging on ultimately empty rhetoric that boils blood.

This is not the first budget proposed by the DAP. The consistency on producing such document thus far deserves commendation and future production should be encouraged to develop policy debate in public sphere. PKR and PAS need to work with DAP or emulate DAP on this front.

Now that the pleasantries have been dispensed off, it is time to get down to business.

While I have yet to read fully the proposal, I disagree with a number of issues. One is the tweaking of contributions to the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF). Two is the creation of entitlement culture.

For the uninitiated, the EPF is a social security fund providing retirement benefits for its members that, basically, includes all employees employed in Malaysia, making EPF a payroll tax. Employees in Malaysia are required to contribute a certain percentage of their wages into the fund. Employers are also required to contribute some kind of percentage into their employees’ account. Employees will be able to withdraw that money after retirement or at any other point of time before retirement for certain purpose that is not worth going into here.

Early in the section (Section 9.1.3 on page 37), the proposal begins by stating how important savings is, how low-income Malaysians have trouble saving and how unequal wealth distribution in Malaysia is. After stating so, it proposes that employers’ contribution to EPF account of low-income and middle-income workers be increased.

The problem with this relates to a typical argument against such benefits and payroll tax. Employers will compensate whatever required payment on top of direct pay to employeees imposed on them by law by reducing total wages and benefits paid to employees. The idea is that there is only a certain amount of total wages and benefits, which includes the contribution, that employers are willing to pay. Increasing the contribution requirement affects only the composition of total pay, not the pay itself, at present time.

For low-income worker, this is particularly worrying because it reduces their take-home pay. This in turn goes back to the problem of intertemporal choice. While savings is important, it is useless to individuals who are desperately in need of consumption today in the following sense: what is the point of having one million dollar of savings if one cannot use it today to avoid death from hunger?

The example is extreme but it aptly captures the time value of money and intertemporal choices. The time value of money remains material even if death is removed from the equation.

Furthermore, there is enough empirical studies to suggest that low income earners spend large proportion of their income compared to those with higher income. This impresses further on the need to strengthen these workers’ take-home pay given a certain total pay, making their savings less of an issue. I stress, not unimportant, but less of an issue compared to take-home pay.

However, different path is laid out several paragraphs later, with respect to EPF contributions.

As part of its FairWage initiative, DAP proposes to decrease workers’ contribution to EPF for those earning from RM900 to (but not inclusive of) RM1,400 and waive entirely for those earning below RM900. This addresses the concern on take-home pay but notice how it starts to contradict DAP’s point on insufficient savings for retirement of low-waged Malaysians.

As part of its FairWage initiative as well, employers’ contribution is proposed to see reduction to make these workers more employable. This is the right idea but again, this proposal suffers the same contradiction as the first FairWage point.

The third component of the FairWage initiative is a set of entitlements that comes partly in cash transfer and partly transfer from government coffers into the account of certain classes of workers. This perhaps plugs the the gap in saving caused by the two FairWage points but it raises a question of unnecessary complexity.

Notwithstanding the contradiction (it seems to me that there was a war between the left and the right in preparing the proposal; what else can explain the inconsistency? Or is it a case of trying to please everybody?), looking at the FairWage initiative as a whole, the bottom line is really about cash transfer from the government to those who the DAP considered as earning low and medium level income. In the proposal, the DAP states that this is practically an earned income tax credit scheme. It is basically a negative income tax regime where those earning below a certain level of income gets money or tax credit instead of paying tax to the government. In a sense, it is already in place in Malaysia, where, if I am not mistaking the number of I saw on my tax form, the government of Malaysia gives Malaysians tax credit worth RM8,000 for living expenses. I think the proposal by DAP only enhances it.

Whatever it is, the whole design seems overly complicated. Ignoring the normative issue which I will touch later, would it not be easier to not tweak the EPF configuration and just do the transfers instead? Instead of tweaking EPF, the government can, or rather, DAP could, tweak the composition of transfers instead to achieve the same goal sought by the reduction, or in general, changes in contributions to EPF by employees and employers.

That is issue one.

Issue two is the normative aspect of the whole proposal and perhaps, more seriously and more holistically. Without writing too many words, it risks creating a culture of entitlement. The FairWage is just one factor that suggests how entitlement mentality predominates the proposal. RM1,500 is proposed to be given to non-working spouse whose partner earn less than RM3,000 (per month, I assume). This simply robs incentive to work. Individuals are rewarded for not working. This may potentially lower local labor participation rate and eventually, lower output for the economy. To note, low labor participation rate is much worse than low employment rate.

Greater suggestion of creation of entitlement culture is the granting of citizenship bonus labeled as Malaysia Reversed Bonus. That is not the only citizenship bonus. Senior Malaysian Bonus another one. These bonuses are mentioned in other sections which I have yet to read thoroughly.

There is one aspect of the proposal that I like that falls within the section. It is a limit to employers’ contribution for those earning beyond a certain level of income. That decreases cost of doing business and even increases take-home pay of workers.

I will comment on the proposed federal budget by DAP further as I go through it slowly.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — [Democratising Malaysia’s Economy: DAP Alternative National Budget 2010. DAP. 2009]