Owners skeptical about progressive car tax plan
JAKARTA (JP): Car owners are skeptical about a planned progressive car tax, saying it will only create new loopholes for corrupt officers.
"More loopholes will be created because of this new car tax as long as services and the administration at agencies involved in the issuance of car ownership documents remain poor," said Thomas, an East Jakarta resident who owns two cars.
Thomas was commenting on a bill on a new car tax, which includes an annual progressive car tax system. The bill was approved Monday by the City Council and Governor Surjadi Soedirdja.
The bill, to be put into effect this year, states that motorists must pay 120 percent of effective tax levels for a second a car, 140 percent for a third car, 160 percent for a fourth car, 180 percent for the fifth and 200 percent for the sixth and any others. The extra taxes will be imposed on owners of passenger cars (and on companies owning more than one cars) that are not used for public transportation.
"The idea is good, but the question is, will the practice be good as well? Can all of the funds collected from this progressive tax be used for the public welfare as planned? And will there be a guarantee that the funds will go to the right place?" Thomas asked yesterday in an interview with The Jakarta Post.
Rudini
In 1992, the minister of home affairs at the time, Rudini, one of the supporters of the policy, suggested that the administration use the funds collected from the progressive tax to purchase more buses.
"This (tax collection) will allow people to own six to 10 cars. On the other hand, the money generated from the private vehicle tax can be used to subsidize public transportation," said Rudini.
The progressive car taxes are, according to the City Council, aimed at increasing the city's revenue. It is also to ensure a more equal distribution of wealth among the residents by drawing more taxes from the rich to help solve the city's traffic problem.
Thomas said he doubts that the progressive car tax will solve the traffic problem.
"First, people will complain, but then since there is no other choice, they would rather pay the tax than to take public transportation, which cannot yet be relied on," he argued.
Several other car owners interviewed by the Post also expressed their doubts that the new system can be implemented properly.
"It will only open more doors to corruption, for example, by those in charge of the issuance of ID cards or family cards," said a production manager of a pharmaceutical company in West Jakarta who declined to give his name.
Meanwhile, Mansyur Achmad, the chairman of the City Council's Commission D on transportation, said that the newly passed bill is designed to take into account the practice of owners of more than one car registering the cars under various names to avoid the tax.
Requirement
The bill requires the use of family identity cards and personal identity cards as a basis of identification to determine who will pay the tax, Mansyur said.
Family identity cards record the identity of a family who lives at one address. The cards must be approved by the heads of the community units where the family resides. Persons other than the mother, father and children of the family are excluded from the cards.
This means that it would be theoretically impossible for an owner of more than one car to register his second car using the name of his servant or other non-family members.
Mansyur said yesterday the details on how to protect the regulation from such delinquent tax payers will be discussed later, and particulars about it will be appended once the newly passed bill is approved by the Minister of Home Affairs.
Some members of the City Council said that to effectively implement the new regulation, district and subdistrict officials will check car ownership in their areas.
The majority of owners said that they were not yet well- informed about the new system. They were also in the dark about the important role of the family identity cards in car ownership registration. (als/arf)