When the Coalition of Hope (Pakatan Harapan) unveiled its first ever budget as Malaysia’s new ruling coalition, one of the key points that caught the attention of Malaysians was the taxing of imported services, including online services.In November 2018 – when Malaysia’s 2019 budget was tabled – the country’s Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng revealed that the government would impose and remit a tax on online services such as software, music, video and digital advertising beginning January 2020.

Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, these are only a handful of available streaming services where people today have the power to decide what they want to watch and when they want to watch it. All one needs is an electronic device to play videos, an internet connection and an account on one of these services.Last year, a report published by Dataxis estimated that Southeast Asia will have four million paid subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) accounts in 2019.

Southeast Asia’s appetite for pirated content via TV boxes or illicit streaming devices (ISDs) is an increasing concern for governments, content creators and the broadcasting industry.Faced with hefty monthly fees, repetitive content and poor services, more and more consumers have made the switch from traditional broadcasters to ISDs – where they can get access to thousands of channels providing copyrighted content for a fraction of the price.Easily found in shopping malls or on e-commerce si