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Malaysia Tax for Cross-Border Sellers: SST and the 10% LVG Tax

Malaysia Tax for Cross-Border Sellers: SST and the 10% LVG Tax

Cross-border sellers shipping into Malaysia deal with two different taxes that are easy to conflate. One is a sales tax on the goods themselves — the Low Value Goods (LVG) tax. The other is a service tax on the platform's fees — the 8% SST. They apply to different things, are collected at different points, and a seller who treats them as one number will misprice.

This article covers what each tax is, who collects it, and where the boundary lines fall. All figures are from Malaysia's Royal Malaysian Customs Department (MyLVG) and the platforms' own terms, verified 2026-10-09.

The two taxes at a glance

Tax What it applies to Rate Who collects it
LVG sales tax Imported goods priced ≤ RM500, sold online into Malaysia 10% The marketplace operator (platform), on the seller's behalf
SST (service tax) The platform's fees — commission, transaction fee, Platform Support Fee 8% Built into the platform's charged rates
GST on goods Not applicable — Malaysia has no GST on goods in this context

1. The 10% LVG tax

Low Value Goods (LVG) are certain goods priced at not more than RM500 that are imported into Malaysia by air, sea, or land and sold online at the point of sale. Since 1 January 2024, a 10% sales tax applies to these imports.

The critical detail for sellers: the marketplace operator collects and remits it. TikTok Shop's Malaysia Seller Terms, for example, state explicitly that it is obligated to collect and remit sales tax on LVG sold through the platform from 1 January 2024. Shopee operates the same arrangement. As a seller, you generally do not remit LVG yourself — but it affects the price the buyer sees and therefore your effective competitiveness.

There is no de minimis exemption inside the LVG regime: if a good falls within the LVG definition (≤ RM500, imported, sold online), the 10% applies. Do not assume small orders escape it.

Registration threshold

A seller must separately register for LVG sales tax if their LVG sales into Malaysia exceed RM500,000 over 12 months. Below that turnover, the platform's collection covers the remittance — but the 10% still applies to the buyer.

The RM500 boundary

The threshold is RM500. Goods priced above RM500 fall outside the LVG definition and are handled under ordinary import rules rather than the LVG sales tax. That makes RM500 a genuine pricing cliff worth watching: if you sell items near that line, a small price change can move an order from LVG-treated to ordinary-import-treated.

2. The 8% SST on platform fees

Malaysia's 8% service tax is charged on the platform's fees, not on the product price. Specifically, it applies to:

How each platform presents this differs, and it matters for comparison:

So when two platforms show "14%" and "14.58%", they are not directly comparable until you normalise them (Shopee's 14% becomes an effective 15.12% with SST).

3. No GST on the product price

Malaysia abolished its GST and runs a Sales and Service Tax (SST) system instead. In this context there is no GST charged on general marketplace product prices. Local sales tax targets specific manufactured goods, not ordinary marketplace SKUs, and cross-border low-value imports are handled through LVG. Practically, that means your listed price is not carrying a hidden 6% or 10% GST — the tax you need to budget for is the LVG layer (on qualifying imports) and the SST already baked into platform fees.

4. Don't confuse LVG with customs de minimis

There are two separate "RM500-ish" rules and they are not the same thing:

These do not conflict — they operate at different stages. The fact that an air shipment is de-minimis exempt at the border does not remove the LVG sales tax obligation at the point of sale. Read them as two layers, not a double exemption.

Worked view: what lands on a RM400 imported item

Take an imported item priced at RM400 (inside the LVG band), sold through a Malaysia marketplace:

Layer Rate Amount
Product price (buyer pays) — RM400.00
LVG sales tax (collected by platform) 10% RM40.00
Platform commission (example: Shopee Women Clothes non-SCP) 14% + 8% SST RM60.48
Transaction fee (on buyer total) 3.78% varies with shipping
Platform Support Fee flat RM0.54

The LVG tax is the buyer-facing tax; the commission and the other fees are the seller-side deductions. Neither the LVG nor the SST eats into your product price the same way, so keep them on separate lines in your costing model.

Note: the RM400 example above is an illustration of how the layers combine, not a quoted platform rate. Category commission varies — check your own category.

What to watch

Related reading: Shopee Malaysia seller fees, TikTok Shop Malaysia fees, Shopee vs TikTok Shop Malaysia, and the full Shopee commission table.

Run your own numbers: the free SEA Profit Calculator lets you toggle LVG, SST, and all six fee layers so you can see how each tax changes your net profit per order.

Run the numbers on your own product. Six fee layers, live market price band, no sign-up.

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Sources

Rates verified 2026-10-09 — always confirm in your seller centre.