Tax amnesty still attractive, says tax official

JAKARTA. The tax office has claimed that people’s enthusiasm for the government’s flagship tax amnesty has not waned as can be seen from the number of taxpayers who joined the second round of the program.

Tax office spokesperson Hestu Yoga Saksama said that as of Nov.14 the tax amnesty, the second period of which started in October, had attracted around 55,000 taxpayers, 70 percent of whom were small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

“If we look at the first and second rounds of its implementation, it can be seen that people are still enthusiastic about participating in the tax amnesty. In the first two months of its implementation, the first round of the tax amnesty program, which ran from July to September, attracted only 15,000 taxpayers,” he told reporters at City Hall on Monday.

Hestu said that so far, the tax office had collected Rp 1 trillion (US$74.8 million) in redemptions in the second round of the program, a lot less than the first period, during which it collected around Rp 93 trillion.

Still, he said, he was optimistic that the amnesty’s redemption payments would rise before the second period ended in December, given the assumption that Indonesian people often leave things to the last minute.

“We are starting to see more taxpayers coming to our office, most of them are SMEs. We will keep disseminating information to them,” he said after attending a seminar to introduce the tax amnesty to SMEs in Jakarta.