Child & Childcare Tax Relief in Malaysia: Every Claim a Parent Can Make

The child relief ladder

Child relief is claimed per child, and the amount steps up with the child's circumstances. Every child claimed must be unmarried and maintained by you in that basis year:

The RM8,000 tertiary claim has real conditions

This is the biggest single child relief and the one most often claimed on the wrong facts. Two things must hold. First the level: inside Malaysia, the course must be at diploma level or above; outside Malaysia, it must be at degree level or above. A child doing a diploma at an overseas college therefore earns you RM2,000, not RM8,000 — the overseas bar is set higher.

Second the institution: it must be a university, college or other establishment recognised by the relevant Malaysian government authority. A private college running an unaccredited programme does not qualify, and neither does a distance or part-time arrangement — the study must be full-time.

A child who is 18 or over and sitting A-Levels, matriculation, STPM or a foundation year is in full-time instruction but not yet at tertiary level, so they fall into the RM2,000 line. In the calendar year they move from foundation into a degree, you claim on the basis of their situation during that basis year — which is why the claim for the same child often changes between one filing and the next.

Childcare and kindergarten fees: RM3,000, once per household

Fees paid to a registered child care centre (TASKA) or kindergarten (TADIKA) for a child aged 6 and below are relievable up to RM3,000. Two limits catch people out.

It is a single RM3,000 for the family, not RM3,000 per child — two toddlers in full-day care at RM800 a month still gives you one RM3,000 claim. And where a married couple is assessed separately, only one spouse may claim it; it cannot be split 50/50 the way ordinary child relief can, and both parents claiming the same fees is the kind of mismatch LHDN's system flags.

The centre has to be registered — with the Department of Social Welfare for a TASKA, or with the Ministry of Education for a kindergarten. A neighbourhood babysitter, a live-in helper or an unregistered home nursery earns you nothing, however much you pay. Ask for the registration number and an official receipt in the taxpayer's name at the start of the year, not in March when you are filing.

Who claims when there are two parents

• Under joint assessment there is one assessed party, so the child relief is claimed once in that combined return.
• Under separate assessment, the relief for a qualifying child is claimed either 100% by one parent or 50% by each, by agreement. Both parents claiming 100% of the same child is a straightforward error, and the correction comes with a penalty.
• Splitting 50/50 is not automatically better. Relief is worth your marginal rate, so RM8,000 removed entirely from a parent in the 25% band saves RM2,000, while splitting it between a 25% parent and a 6% parent saves RM1,240. Give the whole claim to the higher-rate parent unless doing so wastes relief they cannot use.
• After a divorce or separation, the claim follows maintenance: the parent who maintains the child claims. Where both genuinely contribute, the 50/50 split applies. Court-ordered maintenance paid to a former spouse is a separate matter from child relief and is not itself relievable as child maintenance.
• A child born during the year is claimed in full for that year — child relief is never apportioned by month.

Breastfeeding equipment: RM1,000, every second year

A working mother can claim up to RM1,000 for breastfeeding equipment bought for her own use for a child aged 2 and below. This relief is restricted to the mother — fathers cannot claim it — and it is allowed once every two assessment years, so a claim in one year blocks a claim in the next.

What counts is the equipment itself: breast pump kit and its accessories, ice pack, cooler bag or cooler set, and storage containers or bags for milk. Nursing bras, bottles for feeding, formula and sterilisers are outside the definition. Keep the receipts; this is a small relief that is easy to over-claim in good faith.

What LHDN counts as your 'child'

• A legitimate child, a legally adopted child, or a stepchild all qualify. An informally adopted child — raised as your own but never legally adopted — does not.
• The child must be unmarried. A 20-year-old in full-time university who marries during the year stops qualifying.
• You must have maintained the child in that basis year. Where the child is maintained by more than one taxpayer who are not spouses of each other, the relief is apportioned between them.
• There is no limit on the number of children you can claim — the ladder applies to each child on their own facts.

A worked example

Take a parent earning RM120,000 gross with three children: a 20-year-old doing a degree at a local university, an 8-year-old in primary school, and a 4-year-old in a registered kindergarten costing RM450 a month.

The claims are RM8,000 for the undergraduate, RM2,000 for the 8-year-old, RM2,000 for the 4-year-old, and RM3,000 of childcare fees (RM5,400 paid, capped at RM3,000) — RM15,000 of child-linked relief before touching EPF, insurance, lifestyle or SSPN. With the top of that income sitting in the 25% band, the RM15,000 is worth roughly RM3,750 of tax, and the childcare portion alone pays back RM750 of the RM5,400 in fees.

Leave the childcare box empty and mis-claim the undergraduate at RM2,000, and the same family claims RM6,000 — RM2,250 of tax thrown away on a filing mistake, not on a missing receipt.

Important caveats

These are the child-linked reliefs for a resident individual as published for recent assessment years, and the figures line up with the relief table used across this site. Caps and qualifying conditions for the childcare and breastfeeding reliefs in particular have been changed and extended by Budget announcement several times rather than fixed permanently — confirm both are live for your assessment year, and at what cap, on the LHDN relief page before you file.

Keep receipts, the childcare centre's registration details and the institution's offer or enrolment letter for seven years. LHDN does not ask for them at e-Filing but can request them afterwards. This is general information, not tax advice. Use the calculator below to see what your own child claims are worth once they are stacked with your other reliefs.