Your software contract should expect the rules to change
Tax rules on e-invoicing and a new law on artificial intelligence are both moving in Malaysia this year. A contract written only for today's rules will not survive the next change.
Rules that shape your software do not stay still. Separate changes moving through Malaysia this year show why a contract needs to plan for that movement, not only for the rules as they stand today.
The first is practical. The tax authority raised the annual turnover threshold under which a business is exempt from e-invoicing, effective 1 September 2026 (Malay Mail). Businesses that expected to need an e-invoicing system this year may now sit under the new, higher line and not need one at all (Malay Mail). If you had already paid for that module, or you were about to, the ground just shifted under that decision.
The threshold moved once. It can move again
This is not a wrinkle to note and forget. A threshold that moves once can move again, in either direction. If your accounting or invoicing system was built, or quoted, around a rule that no longer applies to you, ask your vendor who decides whether that module stays in the build, and who pays if it needs to come out, or to go back in later.
A sound contract names this before work starts. It states, in writing, which party watches the rule and which party pays to adjust the system when it changes. Without that clause, you are relying on goodwill, and goodwill does not survive a change order.
A larger change is already drafted
The second shift is still ahead of you. The government has prepared a draft of a new national law to govern artificial intelligence, and aims to bring it before parliament early next year (The Star). If your business uses an assistant, a scoring tool or any system that makes decisions about customers or staff, that law will eventually reach it.
A contract written only for today's rules is a contract written for a world that has already moved on.
You cannot know the detail of a law before it passes. You can still decide, now, who is responsible for reading it when it does. Build that into the support arrangement for any system that touches customer data or automated decisions, not as an afterthought once the law is live.
Every engagement Yunaris quotes is priced on its own, and that includes the conversation about what happens after launch. Before you sign anything this week, ask whoever is building or maintaining your system a plain question: when a rule like this changes, whose job is it to notice, and whose job is it to fix the system. Get the answer in writing, not in a conversation you will struggle to recall later.
Sources
- Nearly two billion e-invoices submitted by 268,000 taxpayers as of Oct 1, says Inland Revenue Board, Malay Mail, 1 October 2026
- Ramping up regulations on AI tech, The Star, 30 September 2026