Tax office gets average mark for services

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Giant corporate taxpayers were generally positive about the Directorate General of Taxation's tax audits, collection and objection settlements, giving the department's large taxpayers office (LTO) average to good marks in a recent survey.

The survey -- conducted by market research firm ACNielsen and funded by the Australian government's overseas aid program (Ausaid) -- covered the country's largest 300 corporate taxpayers managed by the LTO in Jakarta.

The most lukewarm approval came in the LTO's handling of tax bill objections, with 54 percent of the taxpayers "neither satisfied nor dissatisfied" with how the LTO handled their objections over their tax bills, while 41 percent were satisfied and 5 percent were dissatisfied.

Figures were better for tax audits and collection management, with 63 percent of businesses surveyed saying they were satisfied, 35 percent of the respondents giving the office an average mark, while the remaining 2 percent were dissatisfied.

While ACNielsen's research indicates corruption was still a concern of taxpayers, overall, the level of satisfaction for all the services at the LTO reached 81, higher than average score of 75 obtained from other satisfaction surveys of government departments in Indonesia.

ACNielsen said the satisfaction scores of the taxpayers were higher than those in its surveys conducted for public service sector in Australia (with a score of 66 for overall and 74 for public services), Singapore (76 and 76), Hong Kong (75 and 71) and India (78 and 78).

Director General of Taxation Hadi Purnomo said the few taxpayers who were not happy with the services at the LTO were "those who were in dispute with the tax office".

"I think it is obvious that there are some parties who are dissatisfied with our services," Hadi said on Monday.

To improve the management of objections and complaints, the tax directorate had established special divisions at the LTO to specifically deal with the settlement of objections and complaints before they proceeded to the tax tribunal.

The divisions work similarly to the tax tribunal with taxpayers and auditors disputes mediated by tax officials from other divisions.

Foreign companies which were still unsatisfied with the result could file their objections or complaints with the Directorate General of Taxation's headquarters, where a special task force would be formed to deal with the problem.

"Foreign companies can bring their problems to the tax directorate's headquarters and we will provide them with a task force team for seeking settlement," said Robert Pakpahan, an tax expert working for the office.

He said the team would have an authority to issue its recommendations as to how to solve the problem.

The LTO was formed in 2002 as a flagship tax office designed to provide better services to large corporate taxpayers, which wanted to avoid extortion attempts from tax officials, which regularly occur in ordinary tax offices throughout the country.