As the clock ticks toward the end of the tax amnesty on March 31, the Finance Ministry’s Directorate General of Taxation has been sending warnings of penalties via email and text message to more than 204,000 individual taxpayers who were identified as having undeclared assets.

Based on its own data, the tax office claimed to have information about 212,000 undeclared taxpayer assets, mostly in the form of houses, land and vehicles. However, after receiving data from institutions such as the police, Home Ministry, and National Land Agency (BPN), it claimed to be aware of more than 2 million undeclared assets.

However, the warnings have led to accusations that the data is far from accurate.

Dessy Rosalina, a private employee in Jakarta, was surprised when she received an email from the country’s tax authority in December last year, requesting that she apply for the tax amnesty, as she apparently had an undeclared asset.

The tax authority notified her in the email, entitled “call to apply for the tax amnesty”, that she had a mortgage that was not declared in her annual tax form (SPT) and warned her with an infographic citing the potential penalty if she failed to declare the asset as stipulated by the Tax Amnesty Law.

“I will appeal this with the tax authority, because this is just too much. I was only late in filing my annual tax form,” she said recently, saying that she had declared the asset in 2014, but admitted to having been late in filing her annual tax form a year later.

She insisted on her right to not participate in the tax amnesty as she had not deliberately hidden any assets. She has opted to challenge the inaccurate tax data and take a chance with an annual tax form correction either in February or March.

Eka Chandra, another private employee in Jakarta, also received the email claiming that she had not declared her six vehicles, even though most of them were bought by her father for his business, while the rest had been sold and the transfer of title had already been completed.

“Personally, I think this burdens people who own businesses. It somehow implies that we’re not good taxpayers if we don’t apply for the tax amnesty,” she said.

Another taxpayer, Mia Argianti, a private employee in Jakarta, received a similar email on Dec. 21 notifying her that she owned an undeclared car bought under her husband’s name. However, she claimed that it had been sold in 2014 and the transfer of title had also already been completed.

Dessy, Eka, and Mia are only three of many taxpayers who never thought they would be petitioned to apply for the tax amnesty and confronted with questionable data.

However, tax office spokesperson Hestu Yoga Saksama said the tax authority would continue investigating more taxpayers aside from the 204,000 on its list and remind them to join the program rather than be charged under Article 18 of the Tax Amnesty Law.

Article 18 of the Tax Amnesty Law stipulates that any undeclared asset owned between Jan. 1, 1985, and Dec. 31, 2015, will be considered as additional income, and subject to a costly penalty, even three years after the tax amnesty has finished.

When asked whether the tax authority was aware of any data discrepancies, it insisted that it had carried out the appropriate measures to inform taxpayers that they were being given a chance to put their undeclared assets on the books or prove the data was incorrect.

“There is no problem. Taxpayers can sit together with the tax office to clarify their assets and we will present our data. We won’t continue [asking them to join the program] if we’re wrong, otherwise we believe they have to declare [the assets] because they won’t have another chance after March,” said tax office’s director of investigation and collection Angin Prayitno Aji.

The government is struggling to push more taxpayers to join the scheme, as the latest data shows the program’s target remains far from reach, although the amnesty’s second phase ended on Dec. 31 and there are only three months left until the end of the third and final phase.

Total declared assets had reached Rp 4.29 quadrillion (US$317.6 billion) as of Jan. 2, but penalty payments stood at only Rp 103 trillion, still below the targeted Rp 165 trillion. Meanwhile, repatriated funds had only reached Rp 141 trillion, far below the government’s target of Rp 1 quadrillion by the end of the program in March this year.

Danny Darussalam Tax Center (DDTC) managing partner Darussalam said the tax office had shown that it was able to access all taxpayers’ data, not only that of the big fish.

The tax amnesty program, he further said, should not only be aimed at the big fish, but all taxpayers as the law made no distinction based on the wealth of different taxpayers.

“We used to hear public claims that the directorate general of taxation had no data on taxpayers’ tax liabilities. Their latest summons, urging tax payers to declare their assets, proves the opposite,” he said.

If the taxpayers believed the data to be inaccurate, he further said, they could challenge it and prove that the assets were “undeclared” due to the office’s inaccurate data or could simply revise their tax forms.

He recommended that the government push the dissemination of information about the legal consequences of tax avoidance in the third phase of the tax amnesty, before enforcing the law with harsh punishments.

Tax office claims to have discovered more than 2 million undeclared assets Penalty payments in tax amnesty program reach Rp 103t, far below final target of Rp 165t

Popular

Govt eyes September for mass relocation of civil servants to Nusantara

Govt claims 'mudik' 2024 traffic management a success

Public hopes swell ahead of election dispute ruling