Indonesia will bring Google’s issue to G-20 Forum

JAKARTA. Indonesia will bring some issues on international taxation to the G-20 forum in Germany, next July. Indonesia will deliver the commitment on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) through Automatic Exchange of Tax Information in Financial Sector (AeoI).

Deputy of International Economic Cooperation Affairs at Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs Rizal Affandi Lukman said, Indonesia will bring the issue of Google against Indonesia’s tax authority to be the concern of the G-20 members. Let alone, this problem is closely related to the development of e-commerce.

The representative of Fiscal Policy Agency at Ministry of Finance to the G-20 Forum Khrisna Adi Satrio said that Indonesia will ask the commitment of the G-20 members on the implementation of 15 action plans of anti-BEPS, as well as the implementation of AeoI and to prevent unhealthy competition in reducing tax tariffs.

Indonesia had brought the issues on AeoI and BEPS to G-20 meeting in China in 2016. At that time, Minister of Finance Bambang Brodjonegoro had initiated the sanctions for those which do not want to comply with, postpone the implementation of, and violate the anti-BEPS provisions.

To date, 101 countries gave signed AEoI, which will take effect in this year. However, there are two countries, namely Panama and Bahrain, which have not yet confirmed their commitments to implement AEoI.

Focus on tax issues

According to Kresna, the 2017 G-20 forum will focus on four agenda in taxation issues, namely enhancing global cooperation in coping with the issue of tax runaways to the countries with low tax tariffs, encouraging transparency on financial information in a global scale, as well as encouraging digitalization in tax collection in every country.

According to the Executive Director of Center for Indonesia Taxation Analysis (CITA) Yustinus Prastowo, there are three issues of G-20 agenda that are relevant with Indonesia, namely the implementation of AEoI, digital economy, and transfer pricing issues.

Digital economy is related to the issues of e-commerce and permanent business entity’s taxation. He added, aside of at G-20 forum, the taxation issues are necessary to be discussed among ASEAN countries.

(Muhammad Farid/Translator)