But the Subang MP said the instruction came too late as some 200 copies of the budget book had already been printed.

Wong Chen did not reveal who gave the instruction, but merely said it was from a “leader”.

“I still remember clearly, all my officers and my interns worked hard to replace the figure from 3% to 0%.

“I was told to defend the zero-rated GST,” Wong Chen, who was instrumental in preparing the coalition’s shadow budgets, said while debating the Supply Bill 2020 in the Dewan Rakyat today.

GST, introduced in April 2015 at 6%, was replaced with the sales and service tax (SST) on Sept 1, 2018.

Wong Chen further said that following PH’s election victory last year, he had hoped that the new government would reduce the GST rate to 3%, and carry out a detailed review before reverting to the sales and service tax (SST).

He said he wanted the incident to be put on record.

“In today’s world, where history can be rewritten and policies can be changed, I would like to put on record that the GST policy that was written in my office in 2016 was reduced from 6% to 3%,” he added.

Wong Chen said he was surprised with Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s statement last week that the government would eventually earn more income from SST.

He said he did not think this would be the case, adding that he was happy with the forecast that SST could bring in RM26.8 billion this year and RM28.3 billion in 2020.

On income tax, Wong Chen said the previous government favoured big business and the rich.

He said the fact that only 16% of Malaysian workers paid income tax shows that the majority of workers earned below RM3,300.

“This is worrying, they are the B70 with no financing.”

Wong Chen also commented on predictions that income tax collection would reach RM37.4 billion and corporate tax RM75.5 billion.

“Empirically, it shows 200,000 non-dormant corporations are two times richer than 12 million workers.

“In developed countries, the people are up to 3 times richer than corporations,” he added.