Tax Amnesty Participation Among Lawyers Shameful: Sri Mulyani
Jakarta. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has called for more lawyers to pay taxes, noting low compliance among high-earning law professionals in the country.
Of the country's 16.789 registered lawyers, only one in 11 are registered taxpayers. Even fewer have joined the government's tax amnesty program under which back taxes can be cleared by declaring wealth and paying a small penalty.
"From 1,976 [lawyers registered as taxpayers] only 110 taxpayers [joined tax amnesty].This is very shameful," Sri Mulyani said during a dinner with lawyers earlier this week.
"It's an incredible profession, knows all about the law. So, they know exactly how to circumvent the law and know very well they will win [the case if they do so]," she said.
Other law professions fared little bit better. Sri Mulyani said the government listed 14,68 public notaries, 11,314 of which are registered taxpayers while only 3,187 notaries joined tax amnesty.
Less than half of the 533 registered curators, or lawyers who specialized in arranging distributions of assets in bankruptcy or inheritance cases, are registered taxpayers and only 60 curators are participating in the tax amnesty program.
In total, law professionals have contributed Rp 328 billion in penalty under tax amnesty program, a figure Sri Mulyani thinks is far too low considering many lawyers, notaries and curators still do not have their tax identification number.
"In the last five years, we can see in newspapers or TV that lawyers are in demand; either for disputes in elections, corruption cases, to slander cases," Sri Mulyani said.
Sri Mulyani calls came as the government struggled to replicate success of tax amnesty first three-month period, which ended in September and reaped Rp 93.2 trillion in penalty fees. The second period has collected only Rp 1.7 trillion, according to tax office data on Saturday (26/11).
Some lawyers have tried to set an example for their peers in joining the tax amnesty program. Prominent lawyer Hotman Paris Hutapea, who is known for, among others, rewarding his children achievement with luxury cars like Bentley and Lamborghini, paid his dues in September.
At the time, he encouraged other lawyers to join the program especially if they deposits money abroad, as Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) framework which is to be implemented in 2018, would make it harder for them do continue doing so.
Sri Mulyani said legal professionals should unveil their undeclared wealth an pay the fees — which is 3 percent of the declared wealth by the end of December — or face tougher scrutiny and possibly higher penalty after tax amnesty program ended in March.
"Tax amnesty would be a success if the state and the taxpayer can start a credible relationship, based on trust and mutual respect for each," she said.
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