Imported Taxable Services and the SST-02A Declaration

This is the most commonly missed liability in the whole SST regime, and the reason is structural: it is the only service tax obligation that lands on businesses who are not registered and never have to be.

A company with RM200,000 of turnover, no taxable services of its own and no prospect of ever crossing a threshold still has to declare and pay service tax on the design work it bought from a studio in Singapore.

Who does s.26A catch?

Section 26A of the Service Tax Act 2018 is headed furnishing of declaration and payment of service tax due and payable by person other than taxable person. Subsection (1) provides that any person other than a taxable person who, in carrying on his business, acquires any imported taxable service must account for the tax in a prescribed declaration and pay it.

Three features make it easy to miss:

• No monetary threshold. The registration thresholds in the First Schedule govern registration as a provider of services. They do not gate s.26A. One invoice is enough.
• No registration required first. The obligation exists independently.
• The only real qualifier is “in carrying on his business”. Buying a streaming subscription personally is outside s.26A; buying the same service for the office is not.

If you are registered, s.26A does not apply to you — you account for imported taxable services inside your ordinary SST-02 return instead.

Which form, and by when?

Non-registered acquirers use Form SST-02A, whose title is Service Tax Declaration by Person Other Than Registered Person. RMCD’s guidance is explicit that SST-02 is only for persons registered under the Sales Tax Act 2018 or the Service Tax Act 2018, while SST-02A is only for a person other than a taxable person who acquired imported taxable services.

The timing is where people go wrong. Section 26A(1)(b) requires payment not later than the last day of the month following the end of the month in which the payment on the service has been made or the invoice is received.

Two consequences:

• The period is monthly, not the bi-monthly taxable period that registered persons use. There is no two-month cycle here.
• The trigger is the earlier of the two events. RMCD guidance states that imported service tax is due at the time payment is made or the invoice is received, whichever is earlier. Receiving an invoice you have not yet paid starts the clock.

You still need a MySST account: a non-registered person must sign up as a user through the non-registrant module before SST-02A can be submitted.

What rate applies?

There is no special rate for imported services. They take the rate of the equivalent domestic service under the Service Tax (Rate of Tax) Order 2018 as substituted by P.U.(A) 173/2025 — 8% generally, or 6% where the service appears in the First Schedule to that order, which covers food and beverage, telecommunications, parking, logistics, healthcare, traditional and complementary medicine, allied health, construction works and education, with rental or leasing added from 1 January 2026.

Where an imported taxable service straddled 1 July 2025, paragraph 5(c) of P.U.(A) 173/2025 applies the post-commencement rate to the proportion of the service attributable to the period after that date.

What it costs to get wrong

Section 26A(2) makes failure to declare, or an incorrect declaration, an offence carrying a fine up to RM50,000 or imprisonment up to three years, or both.

Section 26A(3) then applies the same escalating late-payment penalty as the main regime: 10% for the first thirty-day period, an additional 15% for the second, and an additional 15% for the third — 40% cumulative at ninety days.

Because the obligation is monthly and often overlooked for years, the exposure compounds quietly across many small periods rather than arriving as one visible default.

Common mistakes

• Assuming you are safe because you are not registered. Section 26A is aimed precisely at non-registered persons.
• Using SST-02. Non-registered acquirers use SST-02A.
• Treating the period as bi-monthly. It is monthly.
• Waiting until payment. The trigger is payment or invoice, whichever comes first.
• Assuming a threshold applies. There is none in s.26A.

What’s next

Run a year of overseas supplier payments against the taxable service groups and identify which acquisitions fall in scope. If you find historical exposure, quantify the s.26A(3) penalty before deciding how to approach RMCD — the penalty stops escalating at 40%, which changes the arithmetic of voluntary disclosure.

Businesses that are registered should confirm they are picking imported services up in the SST-02 return rather than filing SST-02A in parallel.