Every Malaysian income tax relief, in one checklist

How do tax reliefs actually work?

A relief lowers your chargeable income — the number LHDN applies the tax rate to — not your tax bill directly. So a RM2,500 lifestyle relief does not save you RM2,500; it saves you RM2,500 times your tax rate (for most people, a few hundred ringgit per relief). Stack enough of them and the total is real money. Three rules catch everyone: reliefs never carry forward (unused this year is gone), the claim belongs to the year you paid (not when the service happened), and every claim needs a receipt kept for 7 years.

Everyone gets these

The starting three apply to almost every filer. The first is automatic; the other two come straight off your EA form or EPF statement, so there is no excuse to miss them.

Which year do these figures belong to? Every amount in the tables below is the cap for YA 2025 and YA 2026 alike, unless the row names a specific year. Seven lines do move for YA 2026, and they are collected in What changes for YA 2026 so you can see them in one place. YA 2025 is the return you file in 2026; YA 2026 is the one you file in 2027.

Prefer it on paper? Download this checklist as a PDF — the same rows and the same caps as below, generated from this page, so the two can never disagree.

Family & children

These are where the biggest amounts hide. Spouse relief needs a spouse with no income — even a part-time salary kills it. Child relief has three tiers by age and study stage, and the in-between pre-university tier (A-Levels, matrikulasi, asasi) is the one people forget.

Health, insurance & retirement

The medical relief is the single most misread line on the form. It looks like three separate items, but LHDN and the live MyTax portal treat it as one shared RM10,000 ceiling for you, your spouse and your children, covering listed serious diseases and fertility treatment. Inside that ceiling sit three separate RM1,000 sub-caps, not one RM1,000 split between them: one for vaccination, one for dental examination and treatment, and one for a full check-up, COVID tests and mental-health consultations. Your parents' medical (RM8,000 above) sits outside this, so it is not affected.

Lifestyle & learning

The general lifestyle relief is the everyday one: books, a phone, computer or tablet, your internet bill, and self-improvement course fees. It is a closed list, so gym membership and sports equipment are not in it; they sit in the separate extra RM1,000 sports relief on top, and the same receipt can only go in one of the two. Read the lifestyle relief guide for the full closed list. And if you paid a professional body subscription for your job — this is the "professional fees" a lot of salaried people ask about — it is claimable in full, with no cap.

Home, EV & travel (the newer ones)

Two reliefs worth knowing because they are recent and easy to miss. First-home loan interest is new from YA 2025 and can be large. Domestic tourism is, for now, a YA 2026-only relief for Visit Malaysia Year, and Budget 2027 proposes extending it to YA 2027; it did not exist for YA 2025, so do not try to claim it on a 2025 return. Note what it actually covers: entrance fees to tourist attractions and to cultural or arts programmes. Hotel and accommodation bills are not covered, whatever the older articles say.

What changes for YA 2026

Everything in the tables above holds for both years unless the row names a year. Seven lines move for YA 2026, which is the return you file in 2027. Nothing here applies to the YA 2025 return you file in 2026.

What does not change. For YA 2026 the bracket schedule is the same, and so are the RM9,000 individual relief, the RM400 rebate at RM35,000 chargeable income or below, the RM2,500 lifestyle relief (still a closed list, still no gym and no sports gear), the RM1,000 sports relief, RM8,000 parents' medical, RM7,000 self-education fees, RM8,000 SSPN, RM3,000 PRS, the RM350 combined SOCSO and EIS line, RM4,000 spouse, the child reliefs, RM7,000 disabled individual, RM6,000 disabled spouse, the 2% dividend tax on the part above the RM100,000 you deduct yourself, and the 10% donation cap.

How solid are these YA 2026 figures? Solid at statute level, not yet confirmed on a form. LHDN has not published its YA 2026 relief page or the BE and B 2026 explanatory notes, so every YA 2026 line above is read straight from the gazetted Finance Act 2025 (Act 874). We will re-check each one against LHDN's own wording the moment it publishes, and update this page. You do not file a YA 2026 return until 2027, so there is time.

If you are OKU (registered disabled)

These stack on top of everything above and need a JKM OKU card. Budget 2025 raised most of them, so old blog posts understate the amounts.

Rebates — even better than reliefs

A rebate comes off the tax itself, ringgit-for-ringgit, so it beats a relief of the same size. These are applied after your tax is worked out.

• Zakat / fitrah: reduces your tax ringgit-for-ringgit, up to the total tax charged (no refund of any excess), for the same year you paid it. Not a relief — a rebate.
• RM400 rebate if your chargeable income (after all reliefs) is RM35,000 or below, plus another RM400 if you claim the spouse relief.
• Donations to LHDN-approved institutions are deductible up to 10% of your aggregate income — keep the official approved receipt.

6 traps people get wrong

Reliefs cut both ways: underclaiming quietly costs you money, while overclaiming can get you fined if LHDN checks. The aim is to claim everything you are owed and nothing you are not. These are the six mix-ups that catch the most people:

• Medical is ONE RM10,000 ceiling, not three separate RM10,000 items. And ordinary GP visits for flu, cough or fever are not claimable at all.
• The RM1,500-per-parent relief is gone (removed YA 2023). Only the RM8,000 parent medical and care relief remains — blogs still list the old one.
• Spouse relief needs a spouse with no income. Even a part-time salary removes the RM4,000. Alimony shares the same RM4,000 — it does not stack on top.
• SSPN is the NET amount: deposits minus withdrawals in the same year. Put in RM10,000 and take out RM8,000 for anything other than your child's tertiary fees, and only RM2,000 is claimable. Withdrawals for tertiary fees are left out of the sum, and only one spouse can claim. See the SSPN tax relief guide.
• One receipt, one lane. A laptop claimed under lifestyle relief cannot also be a business asset. And sports shoes and attire, jerseys and swimsuits included, qualify under neither relief, because LHDN treats them as clothing rather than sports equipment. Only actual equipment counts: balls, rackets, shuttlecocks, non-motorised bicycles, gym gear.
• "Serious disease" is a specific LHDN list (cancer, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke and so on). Common conditions like hyperthyroid are not on it, so their treatment is not claimable under medical relief.

When do I file?

For income earned in a year, you file the following year: Form BE (salary, no business) by 30 April, e-Filing grace to 15 May; Form B (any business or freelance income) by 30 June, e-Filing grace to 15 July. Reliefs you are paying for now belong to this calendar year's assessment — so the smart move is to track them as you go, not dig through a shoebox next April. If you are not sure which form is yours, the Form B vs Form BE guide settles it in 30 seconds.