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The Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (LHDN) confirmed that income generated from reviews, brand endorsements and social media promotion are subject to income tax.

Since many bloggers and freelancers earn money from these activities, I thought it would be useful to have some accounting professionals answer some frequently-asked questions about taxes:

Do you need to pay income tax if you are a blogger?
Do Malaysian bloggers / freelancers need to register a business?
How do I record my income from Google AdSense / ad networks?
How much of my “income” is taxable?

In February 2019, two accounting professionals spoke to members of the Kuala Lumpur WordPress Meetup about this topic. Here are pictures and slides from the seminar. I want to give a warm thank you to:

Winnie Chua, principal of SNC Consultants Sdn Bhd
[email protected]

Rosdelima Mohd Ali Jaafar, partner at Rosdelima & Co
[email protected]

This article is a summary of their presentations at the event.

Bloggers are subject to income tax

Yes you must file your income tax. And you must pay taxes if your annual income exceed RM34,000 a year (as per 2018 guidelines). The good news is that you only pay taxes on your chargeable income, which is your total annual income minus all the tax reliefs and exemptions that Malaysians residents are entitled to.

25 Nov 2018

1 Comment

Organizing WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2018

By David Wang

Last weekend, me and my friends from the Kuala Lumpur WordPress Meetup group put on WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2018. The camp was held at the Royale Chulan Bukit Bintang, same venue as last year.

Rindy Portfolio was Lead Organizer while Sam Suresh, Andy Saw and I were co-organizers.

27 May 2018

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Happy 15th birthday WordPress! #WP15

By David Wang

Happy Birthday WordPress!

The Kuala Lumpur WordPress Meetup Group (WPKL) threw a birthday party for WordPress’ 15th anniversary. Sam, Rindy and I put a lot of effort into planning and organizing the party, and I’m just so happy that it turned out great 😊

In the beginning, we bounced around ideas of making the party a paid event to ensure attendance. Our previous meetups always only had 40-50% attendance rate. But a fee would have been a turn off, so we needed a better plan…

I was definitely going to sponsor, and I posted our tentative plans to our Facebook group. I also asked if anyone else would be willing to sponsor. Amazingly, 3 other members immediately pledged to sponsor.

We were still short of the amount budgeted, but luckily I had an idea and reached out to some old contacts. Amanz Media agreed to chip in as well, and Mindblow agreed to donate their old review units to be given away as lucky draw prizes.

Finally, we decided to print some t-shirts for the event. Sales of the t-shirts would also go towards funding the party, and would qualify buyers for the lucky draw.

Now we had a party! Thanks to the generous sponsorships, we could make it a free event. And because we had some awesome prizes to give away, we could ensure a pretty good attendance. Thanks also to Exabytes who offered to host the party without hesitation at their awesome Easy Space.

Thank you sponsors ❤️

&
LiewCF
Chan MKong a.k.a. MK
Suraya Zainuddin
Suzaidee a.k.a. Dee

20 May 2018

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The Blogger's Guide to GDPR Compliance →

I published something on ClickWP that I think will be helpful to many bloggers.

10 Dec 2017

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WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2017

By David Wang

WordCamp KL took place this past 25 November at Royale Chulan Bukit Bintang. It was a long 7 year wait for the official WordCamp to return to Malaysia, so I was eagerly anticipating the event.

Between the first WordCamp and this one, anyone could have organized another WordCamp. Unfortunately our local WordPress community appears to be very scattered and isn’t actively meeting up. I regret not taking a more active role too.

So you might expect that this WordCamp be a rather small and muted affair. In fact, this WordCamp was pretty big. 16 speakers, 14 talks and almost 200 delegates from 10 countries around the region. Hats off to the organizers, especially Sam Suresh for making it all happen in the first place.

We filled up the grand ballroom

8 Dec 2017

1 Comment

Convert a WordPress website to a static website with the Simply Static plugin

By David Wang

A static website is an ideal format to archive a WordPress site because it is a plain HTML copy of the website. It doesn’t require PHP and MySQL, so the website is hack-proof and very fast. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to convert a WordPress website into a plain HTML, static website with the Simply Static plugin.

Step 1: Prepare your website

Since the static website will not have PHP, it won’t be able to process dynamic actions like form submissions. Disable or replace comments and contact forms with hosted alternatives (e.g. Disqus and Wufoo respectively).

Infinite scroll and dynamic “Load more” post functionality will be unavailable too, so convert your pagination to plain next/previous or numeric links.

Update the content to be an evergreen version of the website. Maybe you want to remove the dates from your posts. Remember, the website is going to stay like this forever (or for a very long time at least).

Deactivate all unnecessary plugins. You won’t need security and utility plugins any more.

Finally, backup your website. You never know when you may want to revive it.

6 Dec 2017

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Break your website’s speed limit with Kinsta hosting →

An unsolicited testimonial for my favorite web host, Kinsta:

I’ve used other WordPress hosts, but Kinsta has been the best by far. My site is always online and speedy without even really trying. I have never experienced caching issues like some other managed hosts and I’m never worried about getting suspended for exceeding resources like on shared hosts. Their support team is small but they’ve never let me down. They may cost slightly more than other hosts, but they have been worth every penny. I can’t recommend Kinsta enough.

8 Nov 2017

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I’m speaking at WordCamp KL

By David Wang

WordCamp returns to Malaysia with the 1st ever WordCamp Kuala Lumpur, happening this 25 November 2017 at the Royale Chulan Bukit Bintang. I’m proud to be a speaker at this inaugural event, 7 years after WordCamp Malaysia.

Unfortunately I don’t have much time to prepare an original talk, so I’ll be presenting something you may have heard before: Why your WordPress website is slow and how to fix it.

There are a whole lot more interesting topics scheduled including some from international speakers, so please make sure to get your tickets while they are still available. WordCamp KL is a great way to get involved in the larger WordPress community here in Malaysia and beyond.

I want to also appreciate the efforts of Sam Suresh of mu dot my who was the driving force that applied for and volunteered to be the lead organizer for this event. I think I’m not wrong to say that WordCamp Kuala Lumpur would not happen if not for Sam. Big thanks also to Nazrin, Rindy and Liew CF from the organizing committee who are putting in the hard work to bring it all together.

See you at WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2017!

3 Nov 2017

3 Comments

Why I no longer recommend SiteGround

By David Wang

The above is a common sight if you have a moderately successful website on SiteGround. That’s the screen that SiteGround replaces your site with when you exceed your account’s resource usage. It’s something I’ve experienced regularly over the past 3+ years with dozens of customer sites.

Basically, all shared hosting accounts on SiteGround have a limit for the amount of CPU time and RAM that you can use. SiteGround will send you 1 warning when you are at 90% of that limit, and when you exceed the limit you will get another email notifying you that your site has been temporarily suspended.

11 Apr 2017

7 Comments