Only 1.9m Out of 12.7m Taxpayers Filed Their Returns
Despite all its efforts to encourage more people to pay taxes, the government only managed to get 1.9 million of the country’s 12.7 million registered taxpayers to file their tax returns as of the March 31 deadline, according to initial data from the Ministry of Finance’s Directorate General of Taxation.
“We are still calculating the total figure but the temporary figure is 1.9 million,” said Darmin Nasution, the director general for taxation.
Darmin was previously quoted as saying that his office expected at least 35 percent of registered taxpayers to have submitted their tax returns by the March 31 deadline.
Harry Azhar Aziz, the deputy chairman of the House of Representatives’ commission overseeing budgetary issues, noted that the increase in the number of people with tax registration numbers, or NPWP, did not translate into enthusiasm in filing tax returns, or SPTs.
He called on the government to exert a greater effort in encouraging people to file their tax documents in order to effectively boost tax revenues.
“There must be a bigger effort to promote this to the people,” Harry told reporters on Friday. “I’d also like to know whether those who returned their SPTs really gave the country more revenue or they were just simply submitting the form.”
The government’s “Sunset Policy” program, which waived penalties and administrative charges both for those who registered for a tax number and those who planned to submit corrections for their tax returns, has attracted hordes of new taxpayers since it was implemented in January last year.
An added attraction was the waiving of the Rp 2.5 million ($217) departure tax for overseas-bound air travelers, known as the fiskal , for people with NPWPs.
Ministry data showed that between January and September 2008, an average of 118,663 people applied for NPWPs each month.
Data from the tax office showed that there were 10.2 million taxpayers by early December 2008, a significant jump from the 6 million registered taxpayers as of the end of 2007.
In January, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told the House of Representatives that the Sunset Policy contributed Rp 5.56 trillion in additional tax revenue last year, equivalent to about 15.2 percent of last year’s total Rp 36.57 trillion in tax surplus.
“We are still calculating the total figure but the temporary figure is 1.9 million,” said Darmin Nasution, the director general for taxation.
Darmin was previously quoted as saying that his office expected at least 35 percent of registered taxpayers to have submitted their tax returns by the March 31 deadline.
Harry Azhar Aziz, the deputy chairman of the House of Representatives’ commission overseeing budgetary issues, noted that the increase in the number of people with tax registration numbers, or NPWP, did not translate into enthusiasm in filing tax returns, or SPTs.
He called on the government to exert a greater effort in encouraging people to file their tax documents in order to effectively boost tax revenues.
“There must be a bigger effort to promote this to the people,” Harry told reporters on Friday. “I’d also like to know whether those who returned their SPTs really gave the country more revenue or they were just simply submitting the form.”
The government’s “Sunset Policy” program, which waived penalties and administrative charges both for those who registered for a tax number and those who planned to submit corrections for their tax returns, has attracted hordes of new taxpayers since it was implemented in January last year.
An added attraction was the waiving of the Rp 2.5 million ($217) departure tax for overseas-bound air travelers, known as the fiskal , for people with NPWPs.
Ministry data showed that between January and September 2008, an average of 118,663 people applied for NPWPs each month.
Data from the tax office showed that there were 10.2 million taxpayers by early December 2008, a significant jump from the 6 million registered taxpayers as of the end of 2007.
In January, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told the House of Representatives that the Sunset Policy contributed Rp 5.56 trillion in additional tax revenue last year, equivalent to about 15.2 percent of last year’s total Rp 36.57 trillion in tax surplus.