State Revenue Agency Needs Rp13-trillion Budget
11 August 2014 12:18 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – A state revenue agency, which the government is planning to establish, is touted to require a budget of at least one 1 percent of the total tax revenues.
"For now the budget is still listed in the Finance Ministry's budget ceiling," Fuad Rahmany, director general of taxes at the Finance Ministry, said last weekend.
Assuming that this year's tax revenue will meet the target of Rp 1,246.1 trillion, as pegged in the 2014 State Budget Amendment, the agency is will require a budget of around Rp13 trillion.
Since Wednesday last week, the government has been discussing about the establishment of a state revenue agency. In Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's last 100 days as president, the Finance Ministry was asked to make a study on the agency's formation.
Fuad said that a state revenue agency, which would be an extension of the Directorate General of Taxation, is needed to boost state revenue from taxes. This whole time, the Directorate General of Taxation has had difficulties in tapping tax potentials, since it does not have the authority to manage human resources and budget.
Once it is established, the agency is expected to have the authority to recruit employees autonomously, as well as managing budgets, so that tax monitoring and potential can be optimized.
Yustinus Prastowo, executive director of the Center for Indonesian Taxation Analysis (CITA), believed that a state revenue agency would be able to collect tax revenue from the mining sector—something that the Tax Directorate General finds hard to do due to lack of coordination with relevant agencies.
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