Tax Office to Fix 'the Kring' That Doesn't Always Ring
Jakarta. The tax office has pledged to improve its services in handling individual taxpayers' demand for information and complaints through its hotline number, as part of a wider plan to improve taxpayer's compliance, a senior official said.
The tax office established a new hotline, 1-500-200, called Kring Pajak — which translates as Tax Ring — for taxpayers in October 2014 to receive complaints and to answer questions related to taxes. But, the Kring doesn't always ring.
"It's like Russian roulette, we'll never know whether we will get an answer after calling the Kring Pajak number," said Sophia, 29, an employee from a private company based in Jakarta.
Sophia and hundreds of other taxpayers couldn't reach the hotline number on Tuesday (08/03).
Mekar Satria Utama, director of counseling, service and public relations with the director general of tax at the Finance Ministry, told Jakarta Globe that the problem was caused by massive call traffic as the taxpayers are facing a deadline to submit their electronic invoices and electronic tax return filings.
The information and complaint center at the Directorate General of Tax received 2,500 calls and had to abandon 400 calls on Tuesday, according to Mekar.
Tax office now has 60 phone lines dedicated for Kring Pajak, meaning 60 calls can be answered at the same time. Under special circumstances, the maximum capacity can double to 120 lines.
Still, there are 27.5 million registered individual taxpayers, 9.9 million of whom filed their tax returnd last year.
"This year, we will improve our network and [add more] service units. Next year, we will provide a recovery disaster unit, a backup unit to double the main unit when problems occur or when the service is crowded," he said.
The tax office cannot afford to neglect service to taxpayers as it needs every dime from wage earners to meet a mammoth Rp 1,360.2 trillion ($1 trillion) revenue target this year.
Finance Ministry Bambang Brodjonegoro earlier said that the ministry mandates tax officers to be focused on improving the individual taxpayers' compliance this year.
The government only collected Rp 9 trillion in income tax from 900,000 individual taxpayers last year, but Bambang said he wants the number of income tax collected from individual taxpayers to double this year.
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