Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Tuesday that, taking into account the number of employees in the country, which had reached 115 million, the number of taxpayers should be at least 90 million, but in fact only 42.5 million were registered.

She estimated that the number of institutional taxpayers should be much higher than the registered 3.5 million.

The Directorate General of Taxation’s tax revenue and compliance director, Yon Arsal, agreed that many [should-be taxpayers] had no tax identification number (NPWP), but he said taxpayers were counted based on the number of households, not the population, “unless wives have their own NPWP and submit their own annual tax return forms (SPT).”

However, he added that the tax office would continue to “optimize” the number of registered taxpayers in cooperation with ministries, other government institutions and regional administrations through the taxpayer confirmation program (KSWP).

Under that program, individuals and institutions are required to complete their taxation documents like the NPWP before they get certain services, like permit extensions from government institutions. The government officials could also check whether they had submitted their SPT.

“Through the program, we want to ensure that potential taxpayers are registered,” Yon said as quoted by kontan.co.id, adding that the tax office was still conducting a taxpayer mapping based on its own database. (bbn)

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