Prabowo Cleans Up Taxes and Customs, Highlights Under-Invoicing

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - President Prabowo Subianto has stated that he is undertaking a ‘clean-up’ of corrupt practices among government officials. Prabowo emphasised that this cleansing also targets institutions, particularly the Directorate General of Taxes and the Directorate General of Customs and Excise. “Perhaps, by cleaning up the Tax Directorate, there will be an increase. Now we must also clean up Customs and Excise. All our institutions must be cleaned up,” Prabowo stated. Prabowo paid special attention to deceptive actions, smuggling, and under-invoicing. “We must fix our governance, right? Things like… the tendency to always deceive, to smuggle, under-invoicing, all those practices,” he said during the Prabowo Menjawab programme, as quoted on Wednesday (25/3/2026). Under-invoicing is a violation method where the declared price is below the actual transaction value. This practice poses potential losses to state revenues, as the low price of goods means importers do not pay import duties and taxes properly. Additionally, under-invoicing can threaten the domestic industrial business climate, as imported goods can circulate at cheaper prices. Prabowo said that the results of the ‘clean-up’ are already beginning to show, especially in tax revenues. “We are fixing this bit by bit. I hope that if we look at our tax revenues, the trajectory is upwards,” he stated. “January, February, March this year have seen a quite significant increase. The increase is about 30 percent, hopefully it holds.”