Bring a foreign artist into Malaysia
Two gates, one tax, and the administrative one is the constraint on your timeline.
What reaches you, and in what order
PUSPAL
GuidelinesPUSPAL clearance comes before the immigration pass, and it is administered by the Ministry of Communications through the ePUSPAL system. Two things about the sequence catch promoters out. First, PUSPAL will not release the approval letter until the withholding tax on the artist's fee has been paid, so the tax is a gate on the clearance, not a problem for later. Second, its dress and conduct conditions are a live artistic freedom issue that appears in no statute and changes without any amendment being gazetted, so check the current guidance rather than last year's.
Immigration Act 1959/63
Act 155A performance is work. The correct route is a Professional Visit Pass; a social visit pass is the wrong pass and the liability reaches the person who engaged them.
Income Tax Act 1967
Act 53Book a non-resident DJ and the withholding under s.109A is yours, not the artist's. The rate is 15 per cent of the gross under Part II of Schedule 1, you deduct on paying or crediting and you must account for it and pay it to the Director General within one month. Miss it and s.109(2) adds a further 10 per cent and makes the whole thing a debt payable forthwith. If you book through a company the debt is the company's, but s.75A makes any director who controls twenty per cent or more of the shares jointly and severally liable for it, which in a two-person promoter company is everybody.
Entertainment (Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur) Act 1992
Act 493The venue's entertainment licence and its conditions.
State entertainment enactments
State lawOutside KL, the state enactment, and in Sabah and Sarawak a separate immigration control on top.
Contracts Act 1950
Act 136The booking agreement, the rider, the cancellation terms and who carries the visa risk.
Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994
Act 514Production safety, with the duty reaching you as principal.
Budget the withholding into the fee from the first email. Renegotiating 15 per cent after the artist has agreed a net figure is where these deals die.
Related situations
DJ a club night
You are playing other people's recordings to a paying room. Three separate licences, one venue licence, a stat…
ScenarioShoot and screen a film or documentary
Approval is the gate, a FINAS licence is the price of admission, and possession alone is an offence.…
ScenarioStage a play, gig or live show
Two sets of performing rights, a venue licence, a duty on admissions, and the question of what your cast actua…
This page is published by ALIM (Art × Law Initiative Malaysia) as general legal information for Malaysia’s creative communities. It is not legal advice. It does not take your circumstances into account, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship with ALIM or with anyone associated with it.
The law changes. Each Act reproduced here is the Attorney General’s Chambers’ consolidated reprint and carries the date it was consolidated to; amendments made after that date do not appear in the text, and the authoritative version of any Malaysian law is the one published in the Federal Gazette. Subsidiary legislation, state enactments and local authority by-laws may also apply to your situation and are largely outside this library.
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