City administration fails to meet revenue target

JAKARTA (JP): The City Revenue Office could not meet the revenue target from parking taxes for the last 1993-94 period, reportedly due to extortion in public parking lots and the fact that many private buildings have been "reluctant" to pay parking taxes.

Fauzie Alvie Yasin, the head of the office, told reporters yesterday about the collection problems at the end of a plenary meeting at the City Council.

Fauzie said that the targeted city revenue from parking taxes for the 1993-94 period was Rp 9 billion. Although the city revenue office succeeded in collecting Rp 8 billion for that period, the amount of parking taxes targeted for 1994-95 has risen to Rp 14 billion, he said.

Currently, there are many groups of extortionists, who are usually hoodlums who "rule" the street. They have territories where they illegally operate as parking attendants, Fauzie said.

"To deal with these people, we must employ an indirect approach by first improving the quality of our parking officers. If our officers cannot handle them, we might consider asking the city stability and public order agency (Bakorstanasda) to help us," said Fauzie.

As for the delayed payments from privately managed parking lots, Fauzie said the problem was that the owners of private buildings -- such as Gajah Mada Plaza or Glodok Plaza for instance -- objected to the taxes imposed on them based on a gubernatorial decree issued in 1992.

According to the fifth article of the decree, 25 percent of gross parking fees they collected had to be submitted to the city administration as taxes.

They objected because they had invested a lot of money to build the parking lots and, even without the 25 percent tax, it was going to take them a very long time to make up their investment, Fauzie said.

"Because of that, they reluctantly paid the parking taxes and as a result, the city revenue from the taxes were behind target," Fauzie said.

That's why there is no private parking service -- a business which would derive 100 percent of it's income from managing parking lots -- because such business would for sure incur losses, he added.

This problem, however, was actually offset by the sixth article of the decree. Article six stipulates if the owners of the buildings had built parking facilities, the capacity of which were 50 percent larger than was required by official regulations, they would be exempted from paying the tax or any other expenses in acquiring building permits.

The third article of the decree also helped the owners earn more from parking fees by allowing them to charge parking fees up to Rp 2,500. This fee is far more expensive than the average price for parking which ranges from Rp 300 to Rp 500 for the first two hours.

However, Fauzie said that there was still no accord between his office and the city parking agency, the City Transportation and Traffic Control Agency (DLLAJ), and the mayoralties in which the parking lots were situated because each agency has its own interpretation of the articles.

"Hence, we plan to develop a pilot project to coordinate all related agencies," Fauzie said. (arf)