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ndonesia’s attempt to lift banking secrecy, expected to start gradually in May, stems largely from protracted disappointment over taxpayer compliance. This is particularly relevant as the game-changing tax amnesty policy has failed to meet its desired target.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati vented her anger last week that only 2.5 percent of 29.3 million registered institutional and individual taxpayers had thus far participated in the program, which will end after March 31.

The extremely low participation has come to light amid revelations that some 16.2 million registered taxpayers had never submitted annual tax return forms, justifying the tax office’s suspicion that they have intentionally dodged their obligations.

Since last month, the government has prepared to lift banking secrecy to pursue tax dodgers after the amnesty program ends, believing that the swath of unreported assets may be in the form of bank deposits.

Banking secrecy is stipulated in both the Banking Law and the General Taxation System (KUP) Law, which protect the confidentiality of customers’ bank data, something that is frequently exploited by tax evaders.

The secrecy privilege has been held dearly. Any plan to have it lifted five years ago may have triggered capital flight as the policy surely frightens many rich Indonesians. But as the world unites to end such secrecy, wealthy individuals have fewer options to park their money to avoid paying taxes.

Indonesia is hitching on the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) program, a global move that contains new standards to tackle global tax avoidance, to force banks to share their data, including with the tax authority. Another reason for the urgency to lift the privilege is a decline in Indonesia’s tax ratio to 11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) from 12 percent in previous years, indicating the significant potential taxes that cannot be collected.

Scrapping banking secrecy is often cited by many officials as the silver bullet in tax reform that aims to increase the ratio to 15 percent of GDP in 2020. That compares with a global average of 14.8 percent in 2014, according to the World Bank.

But ending the secrecy may be legally and politically challenging as corrupt politicians and civil servants are likely to resist it since they still resort to banks to stash their ill-gotten proceeds.

The government is preparing a regulation in lieu of law (Perppu), which is the equivalent of a law and can only be issued in urgent circumstances, as well as ensuing set of regulations to have the secrecy provisions lifted. Such a process may drain much of the government’s time and energy unless President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo can make use of his enormous political influence to pull into line anyone attempting to block the attempts.

Lifting banking secrecy to fight tax dodgers and money launderers is another round of reform with far reaching impacts. This policy will again define Jokowi’s leadership from that of his predecessors.