Won't go into much detail here as I'm out of Malaysia now on a permanent basis and have been for the last 18 months, a decision that definitely turns out to be one of the luckiest I have EVER made. I relocated from Malaysia for a number of reasons and, though it wasn't one of the main drivers of that decision, the the MM2H visa itself, along with the political situation in Malaysia, did feature in the process.
The MM2H programme had been waning in its appeal for years IMHO with the removal of the tax free car incentive and, even more worrying, the ever increasing liability for Capital Gains Tax, a dragnet that spread wider and wider over the years I was there going from (something like) 0% liability if you kept your property for over 5 years, to 5% and now 10% after 6 years (but 30% at any time before that)! The way they collect this CGT is both inefficient and unreasonable IMO. The lawyer retains 7% of the of the agreed purchase price of your property (taken from the 10% deposit) and passes this to the Inland Revenue (LHDN) who keep YOUR money, assess what you owe and, when they EVENTUALLY get round to it, refund the balance into your account! I ended up having to chase the LHDN for my refund (it took 6 months to get a very significant amount of money back), the RPGT I had to pay being less than 10% of the funds they retained! Quite who dreamed up this ridiculous, unfair and clumsy method of collecting RPGT I've no idea but, if the LHDN insists on using such a stupid method, at the very least they should process it in a timely manner and not hold on to very large sums of people's money for 6 months!
Breaking news now though is that the MM2H programme has been relaunched after a period of suspension with new requirements (that will also apply to renewals - so much the for promise of the automatically renewable 10 year Pass!) offering now only a 5 year Social Visit Pass (at a cost of RM 500 per year AND a processing fee of RM 5,000!) with all main applicants needing to show the following:
- Pension income of RM 40,000 per month! (up from the previous 10,000); and
- RM 1 million deposited in a Malaysian bank (up from 150K / 300K dependant on age); and
- Must be able to show liquid assets of at least RM 1.5 million; and
- Must spend at least 90 days in Malaysia.
- Minimum age increased to 35.
These requirements have yet to be ratified officially but are correct at the time of writing. Quite who the government thinks they will attract with these new requirements is beyond me though I very much suspect those who can meet the requirements would not even have Malaysia on their list of preferred countries for retirement, let alone anywhere near the top of it! Indeed one has to wonder whether they actually want to attract applicants at all, maybe it's just a face saving way of effectively kicking a lot of people out without actually terminating the programme.
So unless you are really dead set on Malaysia and can meet the new requirements I would look elsewhere, like ANYWHERE but Malaysia! The government has shown they really cannot be trusted with regard to their promises to the future and are quite prepared to make sweeping changes, with little or no consideration of what had been announced previously, changes that are likely to impact negatively on a significant number of people who effectively got suckered into believing the proclamations, making significant financial decisions on the basis of them. In the end, it didn't end up doing what it said on tin!
Malaysia My Second Home? You've got to be kidding right? No thanks, I'll pass!
This video is worth a look, not so much for the shill like content (he has an agency that assists people with MM2H for a fee so has a vested interest in making this croc sound like it's still a good idea, he also has a very strange idea of quality applicants, anyone with money in his book, regardless of how they got it. Jerk!) but for the several hundred comments on it:
There is also an interesting article here:
