Faisal Syafruddin (courtesy bprd.jakarta.go.id)

Abdul Abdul Manaf, 64, lives in a narrow alley off Jl. Mangga Besar, Tamansari district in West Jakarta, an alley so narrow that it is inaccessible for four-wheeled vehicles. But in the past few months, letters addressed to his son have continued to arrive at his house, informing him that he has car tax arrears to pay. The car was not just any car, but a luxury vehicle made by a brand he had never heard of.

The letters stated that his son Zulkifly Ramadhan, 38, was the owner of a Bentley Continental GT, which sell for Rp 8 billion (US$574,609). Zulkifly was said to have evaded vehicle taxes since September of 2018. Owning a luxury car was the last thing he could imagine from his son, an unemployed junior high school graduate who was diagnosed with a mental illness 20 years ago.

Things were only made clear when officials of the West Jakarta Vehicle Document Registration Center (Samsat) and the West Jakarta Tax and Levy Board (BPRD) came to Abdul’s house, a three-story 7.5-square-meter building shared with other 14 family members including Zulkifly, to collect the overdue taxes on Monday.

The real owners had apparently used not only Zulkifly’s identity, but also Abdul’s and his wife Aisyah’s, to register their luxury cars without their consent. Abdul was recorded as the owner of a Mercedez Benz and Aisyah the owner of a Toyota Harrier.

But unlike his parents, Zulkifly was recorded to have overdue taxes amounting to Rp 108 million ($7,650) — an amount Abdul could only dream of possessing to pay off his mounting debts.

The revelation raised questions about how the real owners could have accessed copies of Abdul’s family’s identity cards, the sole document needed to register vehicles in Indonesia. Abdul recalled that a man in his 30s had asked for his family’s identity cards in exchange for basic food supplies in 2016. He said the practice was common in his neighborhood, with companies often asking for the identity cards of lower-income families in exchange for food stock coupons, and political parties doing the same for the residents’ support.

Thinking it was no different from previous instances, Abdul gave his ID card, along with Aisyah’s and Zulkifly’s.

The offer of food supplies was tempting, as he only earns up to Rp 30,000 per day as a conventional ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver after retiring from the city administration in 2015. Abdul is entitled to a monthly pension of Rp 2.5 million, but he only receives Rp 200,000 a month as his pension will be reduced until 2029 to pay off the debts he accrued paying for his children’s education and a house renovation a decade ago.

The mystery man came back two days later to return the ID cards with Rp 125,000 in place of the promised food supplies.

“Had I known our identity cards would be used for this [car registration], I wouldn’t have let him take our ID cards. I am lucky that it was only a tax-evasion case. What if the real owner caused an accident or committed crimes such as murder? My son, who is innocent, would get the blame,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Although the West Jakarta Samsat had promised to remove their names from its car ownership records, Abdul was far from comforted. He said the Samsat needed to run data verification on vehicle registration to prevent more people, most likely low-income families, from falling victim.

“The subdistrict officers need to educate people about this issue. Many [lower-income] people rarely watch the news, so they wouldn’t know such cases ever happened,” he said.

Abdul’s case is not the first such case discovered, with at least seven similar cases previously reported in West Jakarta, according to the West Jakarta vehicle taxes and vehicle ownership transfer fees unit head Elling Hartono.

BPRD Jakarta acting head Faisal Syafruddin said only West Jakarta had recorded data on such cases thus far.

Elling conceded that identity theft was made possible by loopholes in the 2015 presidential regulation on the integrated system for vehicle administration, which only requires owners to submit a copy of their identity cards to register their vehicles.

“I think the regulation should require owners to submit their tax file number or real ID cards [...] People have gotten smarter in searching for loopholes in the regulation,” he told the Post on Thursday.

Upon receiving an owner’s identity card, Elling said Samsat would not run any data verification as there could be more than 1,000 registration applications every day in Jakarta alone.

Elling said previous cases had shown that residents in lower-income areas, such as in Tambora district, were prone to falling victim because of financial reasons. Vehicle owners resorted to using other people’s identities to evade progressive taxes or even for money laundering purposes, he said.

The vehicle tax imposed by the administration is equivalent to 2 percent of the price of the car or motorcycle, in addition to a progressive tax for every additional vehicle owned.(ars)

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