T

ax officials get much higher salaries compared to other government officials. Regrettably, however, many of them are corrupt as the media reports frequent arrests of tax officers for taking bribes from their clients.

The significant increase in their salaries had no positive impact on their corrupt behavior. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) still arrests many of them even after the significant salary increase.

Recently the news reported that four people were arrested in an operation by the KPK at Terminal III of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten on May 15. Two of them were officials from the tax office in the Matraman area of East Jakarta. They were arrested in relation to bribery.

During the New Order era, many thought that rampant corruption was caused by the small salaries received by tax officials. Therefore, the government has increased their salary so that they are not involved in any corruption.

Regrettably, however, the reforms in the Finance Ministry, particularly in the Taxation Department have had no effect, although trillions of state funds have been spent on it.

The improvement in remuneration for civil servants has been expanded to other ministries and other government agencies with a similar hope of ending corrupt practices by bureaucrats.

But I believe that the arrest of corrupt officials in tax offices is just the tip of the iceberg in the Indonesian bureaucracy.

Just look at the corruption cases in the Youth and Sports Ministry, Agriculture Ministry and other ministries as well as those occurring in offices of regional administrations.

Many junior civil servants can amass large amounts of money as seen from their bank accounts.

This fact angers the people as many of them are now struggling to deal with the increasing prices of basic commodities.

Yohanes Wawengkang
Depok, West Java