The effect of sales and service tax (sst) implementation on the spending behavior among Universiti Utara Malaysia students

The Sales and Services Tax (SST) has been implemented in Malaysia to replace the Goods and Services Tax (GST) commencing on 1st September 2018. SST is a singletier system, expecting to reduce the tax burden on the consumers. The implementation
of SST has a huge impact on all, especially on the spending behavior of consumers. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of SST implementation on the spending behavior and the intention to spend among Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) students. The study is performed by adopting the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)
model. This model is widely used to explain the actual behavior that influences the individual’s intention. The framework of study focused on four level factors namely attitude, subjective norms, SST knowledge and government subsidies towards the spending intention of the UUM students. The objective of this study are to determine
the level and the relationship of attitude, subjective norms, SST knowledge and government subsidies towards intention to spend among postgraduate student in UUM. This study employed the quantitative method by distributing the surveys to the postgraduate students from Othman Yeop Abdullah Graduate School of Business
UUM. Total sample of this study was 100 respondents. Collected data were analysed by using SPSS statistic version 24. As a result, the findings from the regression analysis revealed that attitudes, subjective norms and government subsidies contribute significantly on the spending behaviour among UUM postgraduate students. However, the study discovered that there is the lack of awareness and knowledge on the SST implementation among the UUM students. This study provides a better understanding of the spending behaviour of UUM students towards the implementation of SST.