EA form explained: where each box goes on e-BE.

Most EA guides online are written for HR departments, about how to issue the thing. This one is for the person holding it in March, wondering which number goes where.

What is the EA form, and what is it not?

The EA is a one-page statement of remuneration that every private sector employer prepares for each employee. It totals the calendar year, 1 January to 31 December, and splits it into the pieces LHDN cares about. If you work for a government agency or a statutory body, yours is the EC (C.P.8C) instead. Same idea, same figures, different form number.

Section 83(1A) of the Income Tax Act requires your employer to give it to you on or before the last day of February. For your 2026 income, the one you declare on the year of assessment 2026 return, that means 28 February 2027. e-Filing opens on 1 March, so the timing is deliberate: the EA arrives just before you need it.

Three things the EA is not. It is not a tax bill. It is not something you upload or post to LHDN. And it is not the only copy of these figures: your employer separately reports the same data to LHDN through Form E and C.P.8D by 31 March, which is where the employment figure that MyTax often prefills comes from. The EA is how you check that prefill, and it is your evidence if anyone ever asks.

The EA form, section by section

The current layout, C.P.8A Pin. 2023, has six sections. Here is what each one actually holds.

Section A, your particulars. Name, IC, EPF and SOCSO numbers, and if you joined or left mid-year, the start and end dates. Line A8 is the number of children your employer used for your monthly tax deductions. None of this is money, but check the IC number, because a wrong one means the figures may not match your file.

Section B, employment income. The big one. B1 splits into salary and overtime (a), fees, commission and bonus (b), tips, perquisites, awards and other allowances (c), tax your employer paid for you (d), ESOS benefits (e) and gratuity (f). B2 is arrears for earlier years paid to you this year, which since year of assessment 2016 are taxed in the year you receive them. B3 is benefits in kind, such as a company car. B4 is the value of housing your employer provides. B5 and B6 cover refunds from an unapproved fund and compensation for loss of employment. The heading says it plainly: everything here excludes tax-exempt allowances.

Section C, pension and others. Pensions and annuities. For almost every working employee it is blank.

Section D, total deduction. What was taken from your pay and sent somewhere on your behalf. D1 is PCB, your monthly tax deduction. D2 is CP38, which is LHDN collecting tax arrears from an earlier year through your payroll. D3 is zakat paid by salary deduction. D4 is approved donations through payroll. D5 records any reliefs and zakat you told your employer about on Form TP1 so your PCB would be lower, and D6 is the child relief total used in the same calculation.

Section E, your contributions. E1 is your share of EPF, and E2 is your share of SOCSO, and LHDN's notes say it covers EIS contributions too. E2 is easy to overlook. It is the line our own EA scanner missed in its first version, which is how we know.

Section F, tax-exempt allowances, perquisites, gifts and benefits. One total. It gets its own section below, because it is the one that costs people money.

Where every line of your EA goes on e-BE

This is the table the other guides skip. The code in brackets is the matching item on LHDN's Form BE, so you can find it in the explanatory notes too.

Three rows in that table deserve a sentence each.

The employment figure is not always the raw Section B total. LHDN calls it statutory income, meaning gross employment income less a few employment expenses such as professional body fees. For nearly everyone those expenses are nil and the two numbers match. If Section B includes a gratuity or compensation for loss of employment, part of it may be exempt (LHDN's notes give RM1,000 and RM10,000 per completed year of service respectively, with conditions), and that is worth working through LHDN's HK-2 worksheet or a tax agent before you type anything.

Zakat is not a relief. It sits in the rebate block and comes off your tax ringgit for ringgit, restricted to the tax you owe. There is no relief line for it, and leaving it out of the rebate block means you have simply paid it twice.

TP1 does not carry over. Telling HR about your reliefs during the year only lowered your PCB. The return still needs every relief entered on the relief screen, with your own receipts behind it. Our e-BE walkthrough shows each screen in order.

Section F: the money that is not taxed

Section F is a single total of allowances and benefits that the law exempts, up to set limits. Your employer lists them here precisely so they stay out of Section B. On LHDN's list for the 2025 remuneration year:

Petrol, travel or toll allowances for official duties, up to RM6,000 a year. Childcare allowances for your child, parent or grandparent, up to RM3,000. A phone, tablet or computer benefit up to RM5,000. Long service, excellence or innovation awards up to RM2,000. Parking, meal allowances given at the same rate to all staff, and subsidised interest on housing, education or car loans within limits.

One catch sits in the small print. A phone your employer pays the bill for can be exempt, but a fixed monthly phone allowance paid in cash is taxable in full. So the same RM100 can land in Section F or Section B depending on how HR pays it.

The mistake is the natural one. You see a figure labelled allowances, you think income, you add it in. That turns tax-free money into taxed money, and nobody at LHDN is going to point it out, because it is your return and you are allowed to overpay.

A worked example: Syafiqah's EA form

Syafiqah earns RM5,000 a month. Her EA for 2026 shows RM60,000 of salary in B1(a), a RM7,500 bonus in B1(b), and her fixed RM100 a month phone allowance, RM1,200, in B1(c). Section B totals RM68,700. Section D shows PCB of RM1,620 and zakat of RM600 through payroll. Section E shows EPF of RM7,557 and SOCSO of just over RM400. Section F shows RM3,600, her travel allowance for client visits.

Copied correctly: employment income RM68,700. Reliefs of RM13,350, made up of the automatic RM9,000, EPF restricted to RM4,000, and SOCSO and EIS restricted to RM350. Chargeable income RM55,350. The first RM50,000 costs RM1,500 and the RM5,350 above it sits in the 11 per cent band for RM588.50, so tax is RM2,088.50. No RM400 rebate, because she is above RM35,000 chargeable. Zakat comes off next: RM2,088.50 less RM600 is RM1,488.50. Her PCB already paid RM1,620.

Result: a refund of RM131.50.

Now the version where she copies it the way people often do. She adds the Section F RM3,600 into her employment income, and she puts nothing in the zakat box because the EA seemed to have handled it. Chargeable income becomes RM58,950 and tax RM2,484.50, with no zakat to reduce it. Against RM1,620 of PCB, she now owes RM864.50.

Same person, same EA, same year. RM131.50 back or RM864.50 to pay: a RM996 swing, and every ringgit of it comes from two lines on a form she already had.

Two EA forms, a missing one, or a wrong one

You changed jobs. You get one EA from each employer, and both go into the same return. Add the Section B totals together, add the PCB together, and set the number of employments to match. LHDN's own notes count each stint separately: someone who worked for one company, left for another, then returned to the first in the same year has three employments, not two.

Your EA has not arrived. Chase HR first. Issuing it is a legal duty, not a courtesy. If it still does not come, your payslips and the figure your employer reported to LHDN, which you can see prefilled in MyTax, are the fallback. The obligation to declare the income is yours either way.

Something on it looks wrong. Raise it with HR in February, not in May. A corrected EA takes days to issue, and a correction to what your employer reported to LHDN takes longer. If you only notice after you have submitted, the 2027 deadline calendar covers the six-month window for amending a return.

What to do now

Three small things, and you can do all of them before e-Filing opens.

Find last year's EA and read it with the table above open. It takes five minutes and it is the best rehearsal for March you will get.

Ask HR how your allowances are paid. A travel claim reimbursed against receipts, a fixed allowance and an exempt allowance land in different places, and it is easier to know now.

Then run your numbers through the free tax calculator to see whether your PCB is heading for a refund or a bill. If you are not yet sure you are on Form BE at all, what Form BE is settles that first.