Govt to finish draft tax laws this month

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Minister of Finance, Boediono said on Monday that the government was still trying hard to finish the revised version of three tax law bills, after failing to complete them by the January schedule.

"We are still working on them. We plan to finish it this month. We need to put details on several issues," said Boediono without elaborating further.

The ministry has drafted amendments to three tax laws: Law No. 16/2000 on general taxation arrangements and procedures, Law No. 17/2000 on income tax, and Law No. 18/2000 on value-added tax on goods and services, and luxury sales tax.

Head of the law division at the Ministry of Finance, Maurin Sitorus, said that currently the ministry was in discussion with the State Secretary on the drafts in order to get an approval from the President before they were submitted to the House of Representatives for deliberation.

"Actually there is no problem at all in the discussion. But the State Secretary has asked us to revise several articles which are considered to be linguistically flawed, or unacceptable by other government institutions," said Maurin who is also the spokesman for the ministry.

Under the post-International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic guidelines composed by the government last year, the amendments are scheduled to be submitted to the House in January.

However, business leaders and economists have criticized the drafts, saying they contain lots of loopholes for corruption.