“We will talk about the technicalities. The most important thing is that the planned policy will prevent people from using land for speculative businesses,” Sofyan said in Jakarta as reported by kompas.com on Thursday.

As reported previously, government wants to impose taxes on idle plots of land to encourage the owners to make their properties more productive.

However, relevant officials are still considering the regulations for the taxes, whether they would be treated as income taxes (PPh) or as land and building taxes (PBB).

(Read also: Government to tax idle land)

Sofyan said many people bought land for speculative purposes, sparking an increase of land prices and making it unaffordable for many others.

In response to the plan, Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) chairman Haryadi Sukamdani has called on the government to carefully study the issue before imposing progressive taxes on idle land.

For example, the government needs to give detailed explanations about the definition of idle land and the objective of the policy to make sure that it would not spark problems in its implementation, said Haryadi.

“Many property businessmen have land banks, while they are waiting for the completion of licenses. The government should not impose progressive taxes on such land,” he said. (bbn)

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