Do Online Sellers in Malaysia Need SST? Sales Tax, Service Tax and When Registration Becomes Mandatory

The short answer

Most Malaysian online sellers who buy finished products and resell them, on Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop or their own Shopify, WooCommerce or EasyStore site, do not register for SST. That is because SST is not a tax on all selling. It is two narrower taxes:

	Sales tax	Service tax
What is taxed	Taxable goods manufactured in Malaysia by a registered manufacturer, and taxable goods imported into Malaysia	Taxable services on Customs' prescribed list, provided in Malaysia by a registered person, plus imported taxable services
Who charges it	The registered manufacturer, when it sells the goods. Import tax is paid when the goods clear Customs	The registered service provider
Rates	10% as the default. Some goods are 5% or a specific rate, and some goods are exempt	8% for most taxable services. 6% for some groups, including food and beverage, logistics, telecommunications and parking and, under the 1 July 2025 expansion, construction, private healthcare, education and (from 1 January 2026) rental or leasing. Check the current MySST list for your service
Registration threshold	RM500,000 of taxable goods manufactured and sold in 12 months	RM500,000 of taxable services in 12 months for most services (RM1,500,000 for food and beverage). Groups added in 2025 may have their own thresholds: check the MySST industry guide for your service

Both taxes are run by the Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMCD) through the MySST portal, not by LHDN. The rates and thresholds above come from MySST's own background, FAQ and registration pages.

So the real question is not "how much do I sell?" It is: do I manufacture taxable goods, provide a taxable service, or sell low-value goods shipped in from overseas? If the answer to all three is no, you are usually not an SST registrant. You simply pay SST that is built into some of your costs.

SST is not e-invoicing. SST is Customs' tax on certain goods and services. e-Invoicing is LHDN's MyInvois requirement, and whether it applies to you depends on your turnover and LHDN's rollout, not on SST registration. For sellers, see our guide to e-invoicing on marketplaces versus your own store, and for consumer sales, LHDN consolidated e-invoices for B2C retail.

Sales tax: are you a manufacturer or a reseller?

Customs' guides define "manufacture" (for goods other than petroleum) as changing materials, by hand or by machine, into a new product by changing their size, shape, composition, nature or quality, including assembling parts into a machine or other product. Sales tax is charged on taxable goods manufactured by a registered manufacturer, and on taxable goods imported by anyone.

For online sellers, that gives these common cases:

What you do	Sales tax position under the RMCD guides	Source
Buy finished goods from a Malaysian supplier and resell them	Not manufacturing, so no sales tax registration. Your supplier's price may already include sales tax if the supplier is a registered manufacturer	Meaning of "manufacture"; the taxable person is the manufacturer
Import your own stock (for example, a container from China)	Sales tax on taxable imported goods is paid at import, through the Customs import declaration (Form K1). This is a cost of importing, not a registration	Sales Tax Act s.8(1)(b), as set out in the 2026 registration guide; 2025 rate-change FAQ Q8
Break bulk goods into smaller packs without changing them	Listed as an operation exempt from registration, for example a stationery shop that repacks bulk stationery imported from China	Exemption-from-registration guide, Operation 7
Print, stitch or attach logos, or embroider, on ready-made garments	Listed as exempt from registration. A business that also manufactures the garments does not qualify	Exemption-from-registration guide, Operation 13
Make your own products, such as candles, soap, cosmetics, sauces or sewn clothing	Likely to be manufacturing. You must register only if your products are taxable goods and their sales pass RM500,000 in 12 months	Registration guide, sections 4.1 and 4.4

Two details matter for mixed businesses:

• Only manufactured taxable goods count towards the threshold. Customs' registration guide measures the "value of sales of taxable goods manufactured". Goods you only resell, and goods on the exempt list, do not count.
• Many goods are exempt, and the list changed in 2025. Since 1 July 2025, goods listed in the Sales Tax (Rate of Tax) Order 2025 are taxed at 5% or a specific rate. Goods listed in the Sales Tax (Goods Exempted from Tax) Order 2025 are exempt. Everything else is taxed at 10%. Customs' FAQ tells you to confirm your product's tariff code with the Technical Services Division in your state if you are unsure.

Worked example: an own-brand candle seller

Aina makes scented candles at home and sells them on TikTok Shop. She also resells imported reed diffusers. Assume her candles are taxable goods at 10%. Always check your own tariff code.

Period	Candle sales (goods she manufactures)	Diffuser sales (resold)
September 2025 to July 2026 (11 months)	RM462,000	RM300,000
August 2026	RM41,500	RM28,000
12-month total	RM503,500	Does not count

Under the historical method (the current month plus the 11 months before it), Aina's candle sales passed RM500,000 at the end of August 2026. Her diffuser sales do not count, because she did not manufacture them.

Customs' March 2026 registration guide follows the same timeline in its own example:

1. By 30 September 2026: apply on MySST using form SST-01. The guide says to apply no later than the last day of the month after you become liable.
2. 1 October 2026: registration takes effect on the first day of the month after the month you applied, once Customs approves it.
3. From 1 October 2026: she charges 10% on each candle sale. A RM100 candle becomes RM100 + RM10 sales tax = RM110.

The future method works the other way. If this month's sales plus the sales you expect in the next 11 months will pass RM500,000, you become liable now. Customs' example uses RM100,000 of actual sales plus RM420,000 expected, which gives RM520,000. A big wholesale order can therefore make you liable before your past sales reach the threshold.

Service tax: do you provide a taxable service?

Service tax applies only to services on Customs' prescribed list. Selling goods is not on it. Its scope keeps growing, though. Since 1 July 2025, MySST lists new groups such as rental or leasing, construction work, financial services, private healthcare and education. Three situations are relevant to online sellers.

1. You charge your customers for delivery

Customs' logistics guide (June 2025) treats goods delivery as a taxable logistics service at 6%. Its examples include a furniture seller that delivers furniture to its customers' homes.

On most Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop orders, the platform or its courier provides the delivery. The guide's marketplace examples show the platform charging you, the seller, service tax on a delivery fee it bills you, and the platform accounting for the tax when it bills the buyer's shipping fee itself. In those cases you are the customer, not the provider. The question arises when you invoice buyers a delivery charge, for example on your own web store.

For the threshold, only the delivery charges count. The guide's supermarket example sells RM600,000 of goods and bills RM200,000 of delivery charges. It measures only the RM200,000 against the RM500,000 threshold, so the supermarket is not liable to register.

The same logic applies to an online seller. If you billed RM180,000 of delivery charges in the last 12 months, you are below the threshold even if your product sales were RM1.2 million. At RM520,000 of delivery charges, you would pass it.

Re-billed courier charges probably count too. The guide illustrates a courier charging the seller service tax, and the seller then charging the buyer the delivery charge plus service tax. So delivery charges you bill buyers yourself are likely to count towards the RM500,000 logistics threshold even when a third-party courier does the delivery. If your delivery income is approaching RM500,000, get a written answer from Customs (a customs ruling) or ask your tax agent. For how to record courier costs and shipping income, see our guide to COD and courier costs.

2. You sell software, licences or other IT services

Customs' IT services guide (V7, February 2026) says that reselling software is a taxable service, including by an online distributor. A computer sold together with its software is still a sale of goods. If you sell software licence keys or subscriptions separately, check whether you are providing a taxable IT service. The 8% rate and the RM500,000 threshold apply.

For example, a registered reseller that sells a RM1,000 licence charges RM80 of service tax (8%), for a RM1,080 invoice. Service tax is normally accounted for when payment is received. Customs' logistics guide adds that if no payment is received within 12 months of providing the service, you must account for and pay the tax on the unpaid amount once those 12 months have passed.

3. Your other services

If you also sell services such as design, consulting, training, advertising or rental, check each one against the current MySST industry guide for that service. Each taxable service has its own group, rate and sometimes its own threshold. Rental or leasing, for example, is one of the groups added in 2025, and MySST lists it at 6% from 1 January 2026, not 8%.

You pay SST even when you are not registered

Being unregistered does not mean SST never touches your books:

• Imported stock: sales tax on taxable imported goods is paid when the goods clear Customs.
• Services you buy: registered providers charge you service tax on their invoices, for example 6% on delivery from a registered courier. Shopee and TikTok Shop, for example, state that their transaction fees include 8% SST: see the SST inside marketplace fees and our guide to courier costs. Keep the tax invoices from your marketplace and courier for each month. Our net settlement reconciliation guide shows how to split the fees out of a payout.
• Overseas services (imported taxable services): Customs' guide says a business in Malaysia that acquires a taxable service from overseas must account for service tax, whether or not it is registered. An unregistered business declares it on form SST-02A by the last day of the month after the month it paid or received the invoice, whichever came first. The digital services guide adds that a business already charged service tax by a foreign provider registered with Customs does not account for it again. Check your overseas invoices for a Malaysian service tax charge and registration number. These guides date from 2019 and 2021, so confirm the current treatment.
• Low-value goods shipped from overseas (LVG): since 1 January 2024, sales tax at 10% applies to goods sold at RM500 or less that are brought into Malaysia by land, sea or air (cigarettes, tobacco, liquor and e-cigarettes are excluded). Sellers inside or outside Malaysia must register once those sales pass RM500,000 in 12 months. They register on the separate MyLVG portal (mylvg.customs.gov.my) and file an LVG-02 return for each three-month taxable period. Customs' LVG guide (V2.1, 1 August 2024) treats an online marketplace operator as the seller if any one of these applies: it is authorised to charge the customer, it is authorised to deliver the goods, it sets the terms and conditions of the sale, the documents the customer receives show the sale as made by the marketplace, or the marketplace and the merchant have agreed in their contract that the marketplace is responsible for LVG sales tax. So if you sell through a marketplace, check your seller agreement and whether the platform already charges LVG sales tax on your orders before you register yourself. This matters if your stock ships to buyers directly from an overseas warehouse. Check MyLVG for any update to the guide before you rely on it.

What changes once you are registered

The steps below come from MySST's invoicing, filing and FAQ pages:

• Charge tax only from your effective date. Customs' registration guide says only registered manufacturers can charge sales tax, and service tax is charged by registered persons. Until then, remove any "SST" line from your store checkout and invoices.

• Issue proper invoices. For service tax, they must be in Bahasa Melayu or English and show:

  • the serial number and date;
  • your name, address and registration number;
  • a description of the service and any discount;
  • the amount before tax, the tax rate and the tax amount shown separately;
  • the total including tax.

  Do not edit an issued invoice. Mark it "CANCELLED" and issue a new one. Use credit and debit notes for adjustments. For the arithmetic, see our guide to SST invoicing, credit notes and SST-02.

• File SST-02 every two months. File by the last day of the month after each taxable period ends, even when no tax is payable. Your first taxable period can be one or two months long, depending on how your registration date lines up with your taxable-period cycle. That first return is also due by the last day of the following month.

• Pay on time. Late payment penalties are 10% of the tax for the first 30 days, then another 15% for each of the next two 30-day periods, up to 40% in total.

• Keep records for 7 years, in Bahasa Melayu or English, in Malaysia unless Customs agrees otherwise.

• Cancelling: if your taxable sales drop below the threshold, you can apply in writing to cancel your registration. Until Customs approves the cancellation, keep charging tax and filing SST-02. Your final SST-02 is due within 30 days after you stop being liable.

A quick self-check

Answer these in order, and write down your answers with the evidence:

1. Do I change materials into a new product, or only resell, repack or print on ready-made items?
2. If I manufacture, are my products taxable goods, and has their 12-month value passed RM500,000 (looking back 11 months, or forward 11 months)?
3. Do I provide any service on Customs' taxable services list, such as my own delivery or software resale, and has that service alone passed its threshold?
4. Do I sell goods of RM500 or less that ship to Malaysian buyers from overseas?
5. Do I pay overseas providers for taxable services without being charged Malaysian service tax?

If every answer is no, you are most likely not required to register. Still, recheck every month as your business grows. If any answer is yes or unclear, confirm with Customs (call centre 1-300-888-500, or the MySST helpdesk) or a licensed tax agent before you start or stop charging tax.

How GetPay helps

GetPay does not decide your SST status or track the RM500,000 threshold for you. Here is what it does today:

• Tax on invoices. Invoices, quotations and products offer three choices: Service Tax (8%), Sales Tax (10%) and Exempt (0%). Each invoice keeps the rate it was issued with. There is no 6% or 5% option yet. If your supply is taxed at one of those rates, do not use the 8% or 10% option for it.
• Your SST number on documents. Once you are registered, add your SST registration number in Settings. It is printed on your invoices and receipts.
• Store orders follow your registration. WooCommerce connects self-serve today. Shopify and EasyStore are in early access and are set up together with you. A paid order that charged no tax is normally invoiced without tax (a few unusual orders are listed for you to invoice by hand instead). If your store charged tax but your company has no SST registration number in Settings, GetPay does not book the order. It lists the order under Sell online → Channel analytics → Orders not booked yet, so you can decide what to do and invoice it yourself. Even when you are registered, GetPay books the store's tax only when every line is taxed at 8% service tax or 10% sales tax and no tax is charged on shipping. Any other order, for example one with a 6% or 5% rate or mixed rates, waits under Orders not booked yet for you to invoice by hand. Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop are not connected yet.
• An SST-02 working summary for service tax. Once you set your SST taxable-period cycle in Settings, GetPay totals the customer payments received in each two-month period (service tax is accounted when payment is received) to help you prepare your return. It is not built for sales tax, which is accounted when goods are sold, so work out sales tax from your own sales records with your tax agent. You still file on MySST, and GetPay does not prepare SST-02A or LVG-02 returns.

Try the live demo below to see a sample business's invoices and books, no signup needed. Or start free and connect your WooCommerce store today.

This guide is general information, not tax advice. SST rules, rates and lists of taxable goods and services change often. Confirm your position with the Royal Malaysian Customs Department on MySST or with a licensed tax agent.