Topic
#budget 2026
3 articles
Buying Your First Home in Malaysia 2026: No Stamp Duty Up to RM500,000, and RM11,253 More at One Ringgit Over
A first home priced up to RM500,000 pays no stamp duty on the transfer or the loan, for sale and purchase agreements signed until 31 December 2027. There is no partial relief above the line. We worked through the Stamp Act rates, the exemption conditions and the 2023 legal fee scale for homes at RM300,000, RM500,000 and RM700,000.
Six New Tax Reliefs Started Counting on 1 January 2026, and You Claim Them in 2027
The relief list you use for the return you file this year is the year of assessment 2025 list, and nothing on it has changed. Six other reliefs took effect on 1 January 2026 and are being earned right now, on receipts most households are throwing away. They are claimed in the return filed in 2027. These are not proposals: they were enacted as the Finance Act 2025 (Act 874), gazetted on 31 December 2025, and we read them off the statute rather than off the Budget appendices. Childcare is the biggest change: a single permanent RM3,000, plus a new limb covering a care centre registered under the Care Centres Act 1993 for a child up to 12 - though the RM3,000 is per taxpayer, not per child. Relief for early intervention for children with learning disabilities rises from RM6,000 to RM10,000 and now fills the whole medical band. Life insurance relief extends to children, on a four-limb statutory definition. Vaccination relief widens to any vaccine registered with the NPRA. Home CCTV and food waste grinders join the RM2,500 environmental pot. And for Visit Malaysia Year 2026 only, entrance fees to tourist attractions are worth up to RM1,000 - but unlike the 2020-2022 version, hotel stays and tour packages are out. Budget 2027, tabled on 9 October, proposes one more year of the attractions relief, for 2027, and adds postnatal care to the RM10,000 medical band; the other four are untouched. Re-checked against Act 874, LHDN's relief tables and the Budget 2027 tax measures on 14 October 2026.
PTPTN in 2026: The First-Class Exemption Is No Longer Automatic, and Debt Agents Now Add 15% to What You Owe
Three things changed at PTPTN on 1 January 2026, and a fourth arrived on 7 July that almost nobody reported. The write-off for a first-class degree, long treated as an automatic reward for graduating with honours, is now restricted to B40 and M40 borrowers from public universities, must be claimed through the myPTPTN app within twelve months of convocation, and is refused if it is late. A new scheme turns the loan into a scholarship outright for students listed under eKasih, but only if they are under 25 and already hold an active Simpan SSPN account. The overseas travel bar is now targeted at three specific groups. And PTPTN has appointed seven external debt agencies to chase its oldest arrears, charging borrowers 15 per cent of everything they collect. Budget 2027 then added a 2027 deferment for borrowers earning up to RM2,500 a month, an RM50 minimum for RM2,501–RM3,000 and a 10 per cent discount for regular payers. Below: what each change costs, the deferment most borrowers have never heard of, the repayment campaign still open, and why there is no PTPTN discount running right now. Everything here comes from PTPTN's own portal and terms documents, read on 4 September 2026 and re-checked on 14 October 2026.