New times, old law

It seems that the Jakarta city administration is in dire need of cash again. How can one tell? By the fact it intends to start levying taxes on radios, again. Like such taxes as duties on television sets, bicycles or dogs, radio taxes have always been a convenient means for government administrators to get some additional cash when needed.

We do not know how many radio owners the Jakarta city tax officials have been able to register.

There should be quite a number considering that March 31 -- the day before yesterday -- was supposed to be the last day on which the special team assigned to do the initial registering and collecting of the taxes were to conduct their operations. And it was in the middle of last January that the intended campaign was made public by the head of the Jakarta revenues office, Fauzi Alvi Yasin.

Fauzi informed the public that officials representing the municipal revenues office, the city treasury, the postal services and the various district administrations would be going from door to door to register all owners of radios in order to properly levy the taxes. Taxpayers could register themselves and pay their duties either immediately to the team's officials or do so through the services of the municipal revenues or post offices.

To be sure, the collection of radio taxes has a proper legal basis: Law no.14, dated 1994. Besides this, the city administration needs to utilize all of the resources it has at its disposal if it is to give Jakarta's citizens the best possible service.

The problem that comes to mind, however, has nothing to do with legality. It concerns the questions of "how" and "why" this taxation on radios being conducted, aside from when, as already discussed.

As for the first question, that of how to collect the taxes, we may recall the difficulty which the authorities were having some time ago in collecting television taxes from the owners of TV sets. And surely, television is by a long shot not as common as radios are in this country. How many Indonesians own television sets, and how many own radios? A walk through almost any neighborhood in Jakarta will convince anyone that radios are no longer luxury items that only the privileged can afford.

It could, of course, be argued that the tax collectors could simply do the best they can and register as many taxpayers as they can find. But then, the question of fairness arises. Is it fair to impose an equal tax burden on street vendors and company executives? And what about such expensive electronic gadgets as receivers? Or radios that are built into hi-fi amplifiers and that may cost millions of rupiahs apiece? Are they going to be taxed at the same rate as cheap pocket transistor radios -- if they are ever found?

Of no less importance, however, is the question of why radios have to be taxed. Considering the success of the television viewers' groups known as klompencapir, we would say it is in the government's own interest that the ownership of cheap radios be encouraged, rather than discouraged by taxation. For those who don't know, klompencapir are organized groups of television viewers in rural areas through which government officers disseminate information that is relevant to this country's development efforts. It may not be too exaggerated to say that a good part of the success of our rural development program has been due to such groups.

In other words, we believe that it is time we recognize that laws and regulations can become outdated and irrelevant to the age we live in. In the case of radios, it may be better to charge a one-time lump-sum tax on the item when it is sold. Aside from making the taxes easier to collect, greater fairness can be assured because rates can be tied to the sales price. This approach may be worth considering.