On travel tax

I learned from a recent news broadcast on TV of an announcement signed by Dr. Permana Agung, the Director General of Taxation according to the TV news report (while he is the Director General of Customs and Excise and the Director General of Taxation is Dr. Machfud Sidik) to the effect that anybody wishing to visit ASEAN countries is now exempted from the travel tax. This tax exemption has never been announced by the Director General of Taxation to the public with the result that anybody wishing to visit an ASEAN country will continue to pay the tax.

It should be borne in mind that this travel tax is a temporary tax regulated in one of the articles in Law No. 10/1994 on the income tax. It is stated in the said law that anybody, be they babies or senile people, must pay this tax if they wish to go abroad. The tax varies in amount depending on what transportation one uses to go abroad, namely Rp 1 million (air transportation), Rp 500,000 (sea transportation) and Rp 200,000 (overland transportation). In fact, legally speaking, it is not appropriate to include this tax in the income tax category because a person going abroad may not be a subject of the income tax. So the tax has been imposed only to collect money from the tax sector. If the tax is to be appropriately imposed, the House of People's Representatives, now actively reforming our legislation, should amend this tax law. The particular article on the imposition of the travel tax must be removed from Law No. 10/1994 on the income tax and a separate law on the travel tax must be established. This law should be one in the category of object-related taxes (the income tax is a tax in the category of subject-related taxes). Perhaps there is nothing wrong with imitating the travel tax now prevailing in the Philippines.

As for the government agency assigned to collect the travel tax, the most appropriate in this case must be the Directorate General of Immigration because it is this government agency that is authorized to issue passports and exercise control over the use of passports by Indonesians and foreign residents. In this way, there will be legal certainty for the public and the collection of this tax will be legally accountable in the state's budget.

I once heard that some Rp 600 billion of the travel tax collection was missing, just from the Soekarno Hatta International Airport. Only God knows who has caused such a huge amount of money to be lost.

SUHARSONO HADIKUSUMO

Jakarta