It is indeed an honour to have been invited to this national seminar on taxation to present my thought to such distinguished and prominent audience.I wish to record my sincere gratitude to the organizing committee for choosing me to present the theme paper of this seminar on Challenges in the Tax System. The challenge to me rather is how to lift up to the expectation of the organiser and the
fellow audience.I have kept the subject matters in my mind for months to hibernite
hoping that it will generate some fresh ideas so I could share them with all of you.But the ideas had never hatch.Finally I decided that I will just explore the subject with an open mind by broadening the scope as far as possible to invite all of you the distinguished audience here to join me in my journey into the Future World of Taxation -from my wildest dream. Hence, though the seminar brochure emphasised the ' Era of Self Assessment',I have taken the liberty to journey further to the long future perhaps surpassing the 2020 target year for Malaysia to be a developed nation.Instead of presenting
challenges in the form of 'mechanical problems' I have taken the liberty to discuss the pertinent issues and explore the various alternative route to journey, to overcome the challenges and to build a model of tax system
that fit the anticipated environment.I have also gone beyond the normal scope by exploring
the area of Public Finance to relate to some pertinent points in the discussion.Please pardon me if this does not meet your expectation.An academia always treasure an opportunity to share his dream with others and
I am not about to let this golden opportunities passed by
