13th October 2026 - 5 min read
Budget 2027 gives Perkeso contributors up to RM150 more in tax relief. It’s in addition to the RM350 you can already claim each year for your Perkeso and EIS (Employment Insurance System) contributions. It’s meant for people who chose to keep paying for Lindung 24 Jam, or who pay into Lindung Kendiri by choice.
In a statement on 11 October, Perkeso said the change covers more than 8.5 million Lindung 24 Jam contributors. It also covers 1.7 million Lindung Kendiri contributors. Perkeso hopes the extra relief will bring back workers who opted out of Lindung 24 Jam before the 31 August deadline.
Lindung Kendiri is compulsory for the self-employed in three sectors. These are passenger transport, goods or food transport, and hawkers. Under Budget 2027, contributions in these three sectors will count towards the existing Perkeso relief, which LHDN caps at RM350 a year. Until now, that relief only covered the Perkeso and EIS contributions taken from an employee’s salary. If you drive for an e-hailing platform, you’re in passenger transport, so this is the change that applies to you.
There’s also a new relief of up to RM150 for voluntary contributions. It covers Lindung 24 Jam, which became voluntary for Malaysian employees this year, so every ringgit you pay into it counts. It also covers Lindung Kendiri in the other 17 sectors, where signing up is your choice.
Lindung 24 Jam costs 0.75% of your monthly salary, on salaries up to RM6,000. The rate rises in stages to 1.25% by the scheme’s sixth year. If you earn RM4,000 a month, that’s RM30 a month or RM360 a year, so you’d use up the full RM150. Anyone earning RM1,667 a month or more pays at least RM150 a year into the scheme.
Tax relief comes off your chargeable income before the rate is applied. Budget 2027 cuts the RM70,001 to RM100,000 band to 18% and the RM100,001 to RM150,000 band to 24%. The other bands below RM150,000 don’t change.
| Chargeable Income | Tax Rate | Tax Saved On RM150 Relief |
| RM20,001 to RM35,000 | 3% | RM4.50 |
| RM35,001 to RM50,000 | 6% | RM9 |
| RM50,001 to RM70,000 | 11% | RM16.50 |
| RM70,001 to RM100,000 | 18% | RM27 |
| RM100,001 to RM150,000 | 24% | RM36 |
On RM4,000 a month, your chargeable income is in the 3% band once you’ve claimed individual, EPF and Perkeso relief. You’d pay RM360 a year into Lindung 24 Jam and save RM4.50 in tax. If you earn up to about RM3,700 a month and claim only those reliefs, the RM400 tax rebate already brings your income tax to zero from YA 2027. The RM150 saves you nothing. So the reason to stay in is the accident cover, not the tax saving.
Perkeso recorded 10,424 Lindung 24 Jam claims in the scheme’s first four months, about 85 a day. From June to August alone, it paid out RM9.97 million for accidents outside working hours, and 74% of those claims came from workers earning below RM3,500 a month.
If you opted out, you can rejoin online at the Lindung Faedah portal at any time. Close to 10,000 people had already rejoined by early September. Your employer handles the salary deduction, so check with your HR team and make sure the deduction restarts.
If you’re an e-hailing or p-hailing worker, you’ll get a 35% matching contribution from the government. That rises to 50% if the platform company also pays towards your contributions. The matching is part of a RM160 million package that the government and Grab are sharing. The government says it could lift e-hailing drivers’ earnings by up to RM227 a month.
More than 200,000 self-employed people in the 17 sectors where Lindung Kendiri isn’t compulsory will get a 70% matching contribution. Under Budget 2026, the 70% rate was only for people signing up for the first time. It applied in their first year and fell to 50% in the second. The government hasn’t said yet whether the same rules apply in 2027.
The Budget’s tax measures say the RM150 relief, the wider RM350 relief and the new tax bands all apply from YA 2027. That means they cover what you pay in 2027, and you claim them when you file in 2028. The higher individual relief of RM12,000 starts from YA 2027 too. These are still proposals until Parliament passes the Finance Bill.
When you file in 2027 for this year’s income, the current RM350 Perkeso relief still applies, along with everything else in our income tax relief guide.
If you’ve stayed in Lindung 24 Jam, you don’t need to do anything yet. Keep every payslip that shows the Lindung 24 Jam deduction from January 2027. The RM150 doesn’t cover what you paid in 2026. If you opted out, the extra relief is small. Decide on rejoining based on whether you want accident cover outside working hours.
If you’re self-employed in one of the 17 sectors and not yet registered with Lindung Kendiri, the 70% match is the bigger reason to sign up next year.
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Christina writes about personal finance with an eye for making the complicated feel straightforward. She is drawn to the everyday money decisions people face and genuinely enjoys finding the clearest way to explain them. Between articles, she is probably napping, on a hiking trail, or terrorising her sister’s cats.
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