The first year you earn something outside your salary, the internet hands you a confident answer that is usually incomplete. Malaysia has three separate thresholds sitting at three separate administrations, and clearing one of them tells you nothing about the other two. A young worker with a salary and a small stream on the side can be perfectly in order with one agency and completely unaware of another.
The good news is that the rules are published, dated and free to read. The Inland Revenue Board — Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri Malaysia, LHDN — sets the income tax scale and the filing calendar. The Royal Malaysian Customs Department runs the service tax. And there is no value added tax in Malaysia at all, so any guide that mentions VAT here was written for another country and can be closed.
One practical note before the detail: if part of your side income comes from viewing content on an app such as I am Beezy, it is money like any other and belongs in the same record as everything else you earn.
Which administration actually wants to hear from you?
Four bodies collect money from working people in Malaysia and they are routinely confused with one another. Getting them straight takes two minutes and saves an entire wasted afternoon.
LHDN handles direct tax and electronic invoicing
Income tax on individuals sits with LHDN, which also operates the MyInvois electronic invoicing platform and the MyTax portal used for filing. If your question contains the words income, relief, deduction, assessment or return form, this is your counterparty.
Customs handles the sales and service taxes
Indirect taxes are administered by the Royal Malaysian Customs Department, which runs the MySST portal. Sales tax applies to goods at ten per cent, with five per cent for the First Schedule; service tax applies to a closed list of services at eight per cent, with six per cent for named categories including private healthcare, traditional and complementary medicine, paramedical services, construction work and private education. Because the list is closed, most small side activities fall outside service tax entirely — but the rule is the list, not the size of the business.
EPF and PERKESO are not tax at all
The Employees Provident Fund and the Social Security Organisation collect contributions, not tax, and a self-employed person deals with them on a different footing again. The PERKESO self-employment scheme under Akta 789 runs from RM13.10 to RM49.40 a month for insured income between RM1,050 and RM3,950. Deciding to contribute is a protection decision; it does not affect what you file with LHDN.
The two filing deadlines that decide whether you pay a penalty
This is the part people get wrong most expensively, because there is not one date for individuals — there are two, and which one applies to you depends on whether you carry on a business.
Form BE, for a resident individual not carrying on a business
For year of assessment 2025, LHDN set the Form BE deadline at 30 April 2026, with an additional fifteen days to 15 May 2026 for taxpayers filing electronically. The department's own worked example is blunt about what happens next: a Form e-BE submitted on 16 May 2026 is treated as received late from 1 May 2026, and may attract a penalty under subsection 112(3) of the Income Tax Act 1967.
Form B, for a resident individual carrying on a business
The same document sets the Form B deadline for year of assessment 2025 at 30 June 2026, with the electronic extension running to 15 July 2026, and the same treatment for anything filed after that. Two months of difference between the two forms is the single most useful thing in this article.
How to tell which of the two you are
The dividing line LHDN uses is whether you carry on a business, not how much you earned. A salaried person who received a one-off commission is not in the same position as someone running a repeated activity with customers, pricing and expenses, and the second description is the one that points to Form B. If your situation sits between the two — and a first side income very often does — that is a question to put to LHDN through MyTax or its counter service before the April date, not after it, because moving from one form to the other after filing is far more work than asking first. Note also that having a salary does not remove the side income from the picture: both belong on the same return, under your one tax file.
The dates, as published
| Form | Who files it | Deadline, year of assessment 2025 | Electronic filing extension |
|---|---|---|---|
| BE / e-BE | Resident individual not carrying on a business | 30 April 2026 | to 15 May 2026 |
| B / e-B | Resident individual carrying on a business | 30 June 2026 | to 15 July 2026 |
| P / e-P | Partnership | 30 June 2026 | 15 days |
| E / e-E | Employers, remuneration year 2025 | 31 March 2026 | one month |
Source: LHDN, Program Memfail Borang Nyata bagi Tahun 2026, issued 30 December 2025 and updated 1 April 2026. Filing runs through the MyTax portal at mytax.hasil.gov.my, and the department reissues this programme every year — check the current edition rather than reusing last year's date.
Three thresholds, and why quoting only one is wrong
Each of the three numbers below belongs to a different rule. They are not stages of the same ladder, and passing one does not move you toward another.
RM5,000 of chargeable income, at LHDN
The resident individual scale starts at zero per cent up to RM5,000 of chargeable income, then one per cent from RM5,001 to RM20,000, three per cent to RM35,000, six per cent to RM50,000, eleven per cent to RM70,000, nineteen per cent to RM100,000 and twenty-five per cent to RM400,000, reaching thirty per cent above RM2 million. The word that carries the weight is chargeable: this is income after reliefs, not what landed in your account.
RM1,000,000 of turnover, for electronic invoicing
The MyInvois rollout completed with the tranche up to RM5 million in turnover on 1 January 2026. The official implementation timeline, updated on 7 December 2025, states that taxpayers with an annual turnover or revenue of less than RM1,000,000 are exempted from e-Invoice implementation. For a young worker with a side income, that is the line that matters, and it is a long way above anything a first year produces.
RM500,000 of turnover, for service tax
Registration for service tax under the general regime, and for rental or leasing and beauty services, starts at RM500,000 of turnover over twelve months. Private healthcare, traditional and complementary medicine, paramedical services and construction work register at RM1,500,000, and private primary and secondary education at RM60,000 per pupil per year, with all private higher education covered regardless of amount.
| Threshold | Administration | What it decides | Applies from |
|---|---|---|---|
| RM5,000 chargeable income | LHDN | The first ringgit of income tax | Years of assessment 2023 to 2025 |
| RM500,000 turnover | Customs (RMCD) | Service tax registration, general regime | 1 July 2025 |
| RM1,000,000 turnover | LHDN | Exemption from electronic invoicing | Timeline updated 7 December 2025 |
Keeping a clean record of your I am Beezy earnings
Whatever the thresholds say, the discipline is the same: money you cannot document is money you will struggle to explain. Building the habit on a small stream is far easier than retrofitting it onto a large one.
How the earnings arrive
I am Beezy runs on a simple loop: you consult content — videos, articles, advertisements — and each consultation generates earnings, settled on the payment method you already use. Users who are active report the equivalent of roughly RM165 to RM495 a week, converted from the corpus reference of 5 to 15 euros a day at about RM4.72 to the euro, the rate Bank Negara Malaysia published for 5 August 2026. That rate moves every working day, so treat it as an order of magnitude rather than a fixed conversion.
The record that takes five minutes a month
One row per payout: date, source, gross amount in ringgit, the payment method it landed on. That is enough to answer any question anyone will ask you, and it converts directly into a return form if the amounts ever grow. Do it monthly; nobody has ever successfully reconstructed a year of small payments in April.
What if the money comes from abroad or through a platform?
Two mechanical questions come up constantly and neither is a tax question, though they get filed under tax in most people's heads.
There is no IBAN in Malaysia
A payer who asks you for an IBAN is using a form built for the euro area. Domestic settlement here runs on DuitNow, addressed by mobile number, identity card number or DuitNow ID, and on FPX for online payments — 956 million FPX transactions in 2025. For money arriving from outside the country you are dealing with an international transfer, with a conversion and a fee, and the relevant licensed operators sit in the central bank's Money Services Business directory.
Convert and record in ringgit
Whatever currency the payer uses, your record should carry the ringgit amount that actually landed and the date it landed. That is the figure that will ever be asked about, and reconstructing it later from a foreign-currency statement is tedious.
Keep the terms, not just the transfers
Save the page or message that sets out what you were promised. When a platform changes its rates, and they do, the only thing that distinguishes a rate change from a shortfall is a copy of the earlier terms.
Filing without drama
Work out which of the two forms is yours, put its date in your calendar with a week's margin, keep a one-line record of every payment, and ignore anything that mentions value added tax. The thresholds that would actually pull you into service tax or electronic invoicing sit far above a first side income, so the realistic job in your first year is a clean record and a return filed on time through MyTax. And if you want a documented stream to practise on from this month, you can open an account on I am Beezy and record your first payout the day it arrives.
