Govt to finish draft tax laws this month

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.