Caught by lack of fine print in exit tax regulation

Caught by lack of fine print in exit tax regulation

"Sorry Miss, you are not eligible for the exit fee waiver," a tax
official at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya said, to my
astonishment.

Before coming back to Indonesia for a holiday recently, I had
made sure that I met all requirements to be eligible for a waiver
of the Rp 1 million exit tax.

The immigration officer at the Indonesian Trade and Economy
Office (KDEI) in Taipei had told me that all I needed was an
official stamp from the KDEI registering me as foreign resident
of Taiwan, and I would not need to pay the exit fee for the
permitted four annual visits to my home country.

So why was this official saying these things to me?

He told me that because I had been in the country for more
than 183 days this year, despite the stamp in my passport and the
Alien Resident Certificate from the Taiwanese government, my
status as a foreign resident had yet to be legalized.

Not fully knowledgeable about the government regulation on
this matter, I took the words of the tax official at face value
and got ready to pay the exit tax.

It was lucky that I noticed a copy of the regulation pinned on
the bulletin board next to the Exit Tax Waiver booth at the
airport. Government Regulation No. 42/2000, amended by Government
Regulation No. 41/2001, stated that it was compulsory for all
Indonesian nationals and residents leaving the country by air to
pay an exit tax of Rp 1 million.

It also went on to say that those exempt from this regulation
included Indonesian citizens resident in a foreign country who
possessed a legal ID card of that country and did not receive an
income from Indonesia -- as long as they were in Indonesia no
more than 183 days within a 12 month-period, and that the waiver
was given only 4 times in a single year.

It was clear then that the tax official had made a mistake, so
back I went to the Exit Tax Waiver booth, this time lining up for
a different tax official.

Those who have faced a similar situation could certainly guess
what happened next.

You got it! This second official noticed that my passport had
already been processed at the booth and I had yet to pay the exit
tax. He started to give me the same spiel as his colleague when I
interrupted him by reciting the regulation word for word.

This second tax official asked me to step into his office so
he could give an explanation.

"To make it easier for us to count, we start calculating (the
183 days) one year before the date of departure," he told me.
This meant that since I was departing on Feb. 19, 2005, my 183
days would be counted from Feb. 19, 2004. He then proceeded to
calculate how many days had lapsed from the immigration stamps in
my passport, and claimed I had been in Indonesia 194 days during
the year.

Naturally, I protested. Regulations were not created to make
it easier for the tax officials to do their jobs.

I explained and showed him that I had become a foreign
resident on Oct. 15, 2004, as indicated by the KDEI stamp in my
passport, and pointed out that the waiver application form only
required the date of my last entry into the country and the date
of my departure, and that it mentioned nothing about counting 12
months backwards from the departure date.

I even told him that on the many other occasions I had gone
out of the country, I had duly paid the Rp 1 million tax as a
good citizen should.

Well, as I expected, the tax official took no notice of my
protests and stuck to his retroactive argument.

Many people I told this story to said that at this point, I
should have settled the matter with a couple of Rp 100,000 bills,
or said that I was stupid for not waving my press ID around and
threatening them with media coverage.

Well, I should never have to resort to those means in the
first place, should I? Or was that how this country worked --
that the people are trampled on by the very people who were
supposed to serve and protect them?

As boarding time was drawing near and I had no more arguments
left in me, I finally paid the Rp 1 million exit tax at the Exit
Tax Payment booth next door.

On later scrutiny of Government Regulation No. 42/2000, I
finally understood how wide open it was for interpretation. Not
once in the text, or even in its explanation, does it explain how
the 183 days were to be counted, so it might have been 12 months
prior to departure after all.

After my encounter with the rigidity of the Juanda airport tax
officials, imagine my vexation when a friend told me of how lax
the tax officials at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport were;
so lax that they did not even bother to check whether he had a
foreign resident stamp making him eligible for an exit tax
waiver.

Well, then. It may have been my fault after all, and I have
certainly learned my lesson. I never should have left the country
via Juanda International Airport.

Obviously, the tax officials there are taught creative
mathematics as part of their training course. -- Tantri Yuliandini