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Novelist halts reprinting of books to protest high tax
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Author Tere Liye (left) shakes hands with Ody Mulya, the producer of production house Maxima Pictures, after signing an agreement.
Maxima.
(Maxima Pictures/via tempo.co)
P
rolific novelist Tere Liye has vowed to stop reprinting his novels to protest the high taxes he has to pay, claiming that complaints to the Directorate General of Taxation and Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf) had fallen on deaf ears.
“You should be polite to authors because they pay the highest taxes,” he wrote on his Facebook account on Tuesday.
The author claimed he paid higher taxes than businesspeople and other professionals.
A writer earning royalties of up to Rp 1 billion (US$75,182), for example, must pay Rp 245 million in income tax.
Tere said he had informed his publishers not to reprint 28 titles.
In response to the criticism, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said her office was open to suggestions regarding its services, but in Tere’s case, the tax office could not make an immediate response because it was related to an existing law.
Meanwhile, Directorate General of Taxation spokesman Hestu Yoga Saksama said income tax for authors was based on the net income calculation norm (NPPN), and amounted to about half of the royalty paid by publishers. (bbn)
