Tax Office to Chase Down Undeclared Assets as Amnesty Program Falls Short of Target
Jakarta. Taxpayers who are yet to participate in the tax amnesty program will soon receive emails from the tax office warning that the authority is aware of hidden assets and they could face hefty penalties if they go undeclared, a senior official said Wednesday (21/12).
The move was part of the office effort to squeeze more revenue out of the tax amnesty program, under which taxpayers could clean their tax record by declaring hidden assets and pay a small percentage of the assets as penalty. But, even with such a generous offer a large number of tax payers are still yet to join the program.
"We have their data ... If they don't join the tax amnesty program then we'll send the email," Ken Dwijugiasteadi, the director general of taxes at the Finance Ministry, told reporters.
The tax office has compared reported assets in 2015's tax returns to land ownership data from National Land Agency and notaries who report to Finance Ministry; vehicles ownership from local officials and the local police and stocks ownership report from the Ministry of Law and Human Rights.
It found 204,125 taxpayers who have more than Rp 50 million ($3,700) worth of unreported assets but only reported one out of nine of their assets last year.
Ken said that tax office emailed these tax payers today, and plan to send similar warning to more taxpayers who owns over Rp 25 million worth of unreported assets.
Tax amnesty participants reached only 118,957 taxpayers in the second part of the program so far, dropped nearly 70 percent from 393,358 taxpayers in the July-August period.
The tax office is still lagging behind the Rp 165 trillion target with participation among high earnings professionals, like doctors and lawyers, and small-medium entrepreneurs woefully low.
There are currently about 28 million registered taxpayers in the country whose working population is 120 million people. Last year, however, the government only collected around Rp 9 trillion in income tax from 900,000 individual taxpayers.
"We remind the taxpayers with the best of our intentions," Hestu Yoga Saksama, the director of counseling, service and public relations at the Indonesian Tax Office, said.
"We don't want to keep silent when we have [the taxpayers] data and then execute it in April," he said, noting the tax amnesty program will end in March.
Tax office's audit and collection director Angin Prayitno Aji said 4,873 tax officers are ready to enforce the related laws — including the Tax Amnesty Law and General Provisions and Tax Procedures Law — to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who choose not to come clean about their assets.
Taxpayers who joined the tax amnesty program but are caught only reporting part of their actual assets will be forced to pay income tax for the assets and then pay 200 percent of the income tax as punishment.
Meanwhile, taxpayers who do not come clean about their assets and never join the tax amnesty program will be forced to pay 30 percent of their taxable income; plus 2 percent of their income tax a month for a maximum 24 months as penalty.
The second stage of the tax amnesty program finishes at the end of the month.
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