JAKARTA. Those who have investment portfolio in the form of lands should be alert. Likewise, those who want to acquire vacant lands also no need to be rush in expanding the land investments.
That is because the government is arranging new tax rules in the land sector. The future regulation is part of the program of President Joko Widodo in terms of equitable economy. According to the Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs Darmin Nasution, this policy has three pillars, namely land-based policy, opportunity-based policy, and human resources improvement-based policy.
In terms of land sector, the government is planning to impose progressive tax on the ownership of idle land in a significant number. The government argues, public have increasingly invested in land. However, instead of generating profits through productive activities over the land, they merely expect for the land price rise to reap profits.
According to the Minister of Agrarian and Spatial Sofyan Djalil, the speculation has been more massive within the recent ten years. Not surprisingly, the inflation rate in the land sector during the period in average increases 18% per year so that the land price continuously increases.
Indeed, people who need house or land for productive purposes suffer from this condition. The increasing price make many people struggle to own land.
Industries, which need lands for expanding their business also, have to spend more investment costs. Likewise, the government that needs a large amount of land for infrastructure projects is also bothered by this kind of speculation. In this case, the speculators will acquire a plot of land as they know that the government will develop an infrastructure project in that area.
However, to date the government still has no clear definition on the ‘idle land’. The government also has not yet specified the technical matters of the scheme at practical level. The government also has just elaborated the scenario of tax rate, without elaborating the specific rate of the future progressive tax.
