The Taxman Cometh – Next Year
Jakarta. The tax office will boost its officers’ numbers and skills next in an effort to improve its revenue collection, after expected to fall short of achieving this year’s target.
“We’ll expand the tax force [to serve] the users of tax facilities, to detain tax evaders, and enforce bans and blocks,” Mekar Satria Utama, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry’s Directorate General of Taxation, told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.
“We are going to get new employees and conduct capacity building,” he added.
Sigit Priadi Pramudito, the former tax director general, previously said the office planned to add 4,000 employees and 10 offices in 2016.
Indonesia currently has 37,000 tax officers, far less than the 62,000 that the tax office says it should ideally have.
The administration of President Joko Widodo has struggled to find ways to boost revenue collection, and this expects to fall far short of its target this year of year.
As of Dec. 12, the tax office has collected less than 70 percent of its full-year target of Rp 1,294.3 trillion ($92.3 billion). Despite this, the government has raised the target for 2016 by 5 percent, to Rp 1,360.1 trillion.
Mekar said the government had no plans yet to revise next year’s target despite the low realization this year. But the possibility “is always open,” said Bobby Hamzar Rafinus, the deputy for macroeconomic and finance coordination at the office of the coordinating minister for the economy.
Mekar vowed that, in 2016, “our actions are going to be more concrete.”
“The tax amnesty will also be one of our main programs,” he added, referring to a policy under which the government will charge 1.5 to 6 percent tax – the final figure is still being determined – on tax evaders who opt to disclose their true assets.
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