Tax DG Mulls to Embed Tax Awareness Education at Schools

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Tax Directorate General (Tax DG) is planning to include taxation in the national education curriculum. The move is considered to be important in order to raise awareness about tax obligations among young generations.

“Children must be given an understanding about taxes,” Hestu Yoga Saksama, director for services and publilc relations said on Tuesday, November 15, 2016. “There must be tax education in the curriculum, starting from junior high up to university.”

Hestu added that currently there are 41,6 million children in the 4-12 years old group, and 54,4 million teenagers and students in the 14-25 years old group .

“The numbers are very significant in order to plan the taxation in the future. This is an essential investment for the future in order to increase our tax ratio,” Hestu explained.

Earlier, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati deplored that Indonesia’s tax ratio remains low. Currently, Indonesia is among 20 countries with the largest economy in the world with a 12-percent tax ratio.

Hestu added that Indonesia’s tax obedience is still low. The level of tax obedience among individual taxpayers is only 60,2 percent, and that for corporate taxpayers is 56 percent. “From 17 million taxpayers who are supposed to submit Annual Tax Returns (SPT), only 10,2 million [taxpayers] complied,” Hestu said.

According to Hestu, the Tax DG is currently preparing tax courses that would be suitable for each level of education.

“We hope the future generations would be more aware of tax obligations,” Hestu said.

FAJAR PEBRIANTO