Malaysia’s tourism tax is a fixed ten ringgit. Whether it applies to you depends on the word “tourist”, which the Act imposing the tax does not define.
The rate
The rate comes from a gazetted order, not from the Act. P.U. (A) 423, the Tourism Tax (Rate of Tax) Order 2025, was made on 28 November 2025, published on 9 December, and came into force on 15 December 2025. It fixes the tax at ten ringgit per night for each room for a tourist staying at any accommodation premises.
It sets the same ten ringgit per night per room for accommodation provided through an online booking service run by a digital platform service provider, under section 20A of the Act. The platform channel and the front desk now carry an identical rate. That is the practical change this order made.
Per room, and paid once
Section 6(3) provides that where more than one tourist stays in the same accommodation at the same time, and any one of them has paid the tax for it, the others are not liable to pay it. The charge attaches to the room for the night, not to each person.
Two people sharing a room for seven nights owe RM70 between them. The same two in separate rooms owe RM140. The sum is small, but this is the one place where room configuration changes the tax and not just the rate.
Your liability, collected by the hotel
Section 6(1) charges the tax on the tourist, and section 6(2) makes it the tourist’s own duty to pay it to the operator. The operator collects it and pays it to the Director General under section 7.
So the hotel is not adding a charge of its own. It is collecting a tax the statute places on you. If you dispute the amount, the question is about the order above, not the hotel’s pricing.
Where “tourist” is defined
The Tourism Tax Act 2017 imposes the tax on a “tourist”. Its interpretation section states that “tourist” has the meaning assigned to it in subsection 2(1) of the Tourism Industry Act 1992 [Act 482], and does not reproduce the definition.
The words citizen, permanent resident and Malaysian appear nowhere in the Tourism Tax Act 2017. Any carve-out for residents comes from Act 482’s definition or from an exemption order. Anyone quoting the Tourism Tax Act as the authority for who is exempt is citing the wrong document. To check your own liability, read Act 482 subsection 2(1).
The Minister can exempt
Section 9 lets the Minister exempt people from the tax. That is the mechanism behind the temporary suspensions and carve-outs this tax has had over the years, and it means the position can change without the rate changing. An exemption order is a separate instrument, and the rate order says nothing about who is exempt, so read the two together.
Who the exemption order exempts
The Royal Malaysian Customs Department publishes both halves. Its General Guide on Tourism Tax sets out the Tourism Tax (Exemption) Order 2017. Under paragraph 2, two kinds of guest pay nothing: “a tourist who is a Malaysian national” and “a tourist who is a permanent resident of Malaysia. (holds MyPR card)”
A foreign visitor holds neither, so the tax applies. The only open question is whether the property collects it.
Paragraph 3 exempts whole classes of operator from registering and collecting. Two come up often on an Asia trip:
- “An operator of accommodation premises having four accommodation rooms or less.” A small guesthouse is outside the system, so there is no ten ringgit line to look for.
- Registered homestay and kampungstay operators, under the Ministry of Tourism’s Pengalaman Homestay Malaysia and Visit My Kampung programmes.
The rest are institutional: government and statutory accommodation used for education, training or welfare, employer accommodation provided to staff, and approved religious or welfare bodies operating non-commercially. One carve-out catches unusual bookings. Where an employer outsources its premises to a third party for any purpose other than housing its own employees, “the third party operator is required to be registered.”
⚠️ The operator list is dated. The guide carrying it is stamped “As at 17 May 2018”, while the rate order is from December 2025. Rely on the guest exemption in paragraph 2. Check the department’s current rulings before planning around the operator list.
What to check, and where
On the bill, look for a separate line of ten ringgit for each room for each night, not a percentage and not folded into the room rate.
- The rate: the gazette order above, two pages.
- Whether you are a tourist: Act 482, through the Act’s own cross-reference.
- Exemptions: the department’s General Guide on Tourism Tax, which carries the Exemption Order 2017 in full. Its rulings and announcements are on the portal at myttx.customs.gov.my.
- Booked through a platform: Public Ruling No. 01/2025 on the liability of operators and digital platform service providers, the most recent of those rulings.
Corrections
18 September 2026. This page said the exemption order is a separate instrument from the rate order and told readers to check the department’s portal. Nothing on it was wrong, but it stopped short: the department publishes the Tourism Tax (Exemption) Order 2017 in full in its own General Guide, on the portal this page already named.
The exemptions are now above. Malaysian nationals and permanent residents pay nothing, so a foreign visitor owes the tax. Premises with four rooms or fewer are outside the system, so a small guesthouse has no ten ringgit line. The operator list carries its own date because the guide is stamped 17 May 2018.
Malaysian rates, where one room and two rooms differ by more than the room (affiliate link)