Some Memories

THE 2009 tax-filing season for individuals has arrived. For many of us, April 30 will be just another day (perhaps accompanied by scrambling for our just-in-time filing) to settle our dues with the Inland Revenue Board by submitting the Form e-BE and paying any balance tax. Before clicking the button to complete the e-filing, take a second look at the figures keyed in. Is the amount of tax calculated the lowest it can be? Here are some tips on saving tax that would not get you in trouble with the law. 1. Know your income: What is taxable and what is not. Gone are the days when you agonise over the delay in receiving your Form EA from your employer. It is now a law for employers to issue the Form EA to their employees no later than the end of February. The key point to note is not all income in your Form EA is taxable! Scrutinise all the items in Form EA to see if there is any which should be tax-free. For example: Travelling allowances If you receive travelling allowance, up t...

KUALA LUMPUR, March 28 (Bernama) -- Former MCA deputy president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek won the president's post with a slim 68-vote majority Sunday, edging former number one Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting and incumbent Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat in the party's elections. Dr Chua, 62, polled 901 votes to Ka Ting's 833. Tee Keat came in third with 578 votes. Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai clinched the deputy president's post when he garnered 1,171 votes to beat former vice-president and fellow Cabinet minister Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha by 65 votes. Kong had obtained 1,106 votes. For the four posts of vice-president, sole woman contender Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen had the highest number of votes - 1,528, followed by former vice-president Datuk Donald Lim (1,469), Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung (1,202) and Central Committee (CC) member Gan Ping Sieu (also 1,202).

Excercise, diet can cut breast cancer risk by 30% BARCELONA (Spain): Up to a third of breast cancer cases in Western countries could be avoided if women ate less and exercised more, researchers at a conference said, renewing a sensitive debate about how lifestyle factors affect the disease. Better treatments, early diagnosis and mammogram screenings have dramatically slowed breast cancer, but experts said the focus should now shift to changing behaviors like diet and physical activity. "What can be achieved with screening has been achieved. We can't do much more," Carlo La Vecchia, head of epidemiology at the University of Milan, said in an interview. "It's time to move on to other things." La Vecchia spoke Thursday at a European breast cancer conference in Barcelona. He cited figures from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which estimates that 25 to 30 percent of breast cancer cases could be avoided if women were thinner and exercise...

Lee Chong Wei, 28, won the All-England on Monday, beating Japan's rising star Kenichi Tago 21-19, 21-19, and put himself as the fifth Malaysian All-England winner after Muhammad Hafiz Hashim, Wong Peng Soon, Datuk Eddy Choong and Tan Aik Huang. The match is downloadable from the link below. http://www.sendspace.com/file/3xh523

Consumers let down by cap on UniFi packages PETALING JAYA: After the excitement of Telekom Malaysia unveiling UniFi, its high-speed broadband service that offers Internet speeds of up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps), the bubble burst for many consumers here. Some are disappointed over what they feel are expensive charges for the packages for home users: RM149 for 5Mbps, RM199 for 10Mbps, and RM249 for 20Mbps. In Singapore, a 1Gbps (gigabit per second) service – which is five times the speed of a 20Mbps connection – only costs about RM200. But the real disappointment is the realisation that the UniFi packages have a cap on the amount of data that can be downloaded. The consumers bristled when they learned that the 5Mbps service is capped at 60GB of data per month. The 10Mbps service is capped at 90GB while the 20Mbps service has a 120GB cap. They were even more disappointed to learn that the data download caps are calculated on a daily basis . Consumers were further hor...

Dividend-paying companies Personal Investments - By Ooi Kok Hwa Despite investing in profit-making companies, a lot of investors have been complaining that they are not getting the desired returns from the companies that they have invested in. One of the main reasons is that these companies usually pay very low dividends or no dividends to their investors. Hence, even though these companies make good profits from their businesses, they are not sharing the profits with their minority investors. Companies that pay good dividends to their investors imply that the major shareholders of these companies are willing to share their wealth with minority investors. Given that minority investors have no control over these companies, they have only two sources of returns from their investments, namely dividend returns and capital gains. If the companies refuse to reward their investors with good dividends, then investors need to make sure that they buy low and sell high in order to get capita...

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