BPK: Indonesia Receives Less Liquor Taxes due to Smuggling
1 December 2014 16:22 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Financial Audit Board (BPK) member Achsanul Qosasi said that the contribution of liquor tax is still far lesser than that cigarette. Liquor tax contributed only Rp3.1 trillion out of a total tax contribution of Rp108 trillion in 2013. "Indonesia’s liquor tax is still lesser that that of Malaysia," he told Tempo.
He added that the lesser amount of tax contribution is because most of the liquors dominating Indonesian market are not tagged with tax. They are smuggled in to Indonesia from neighboring countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.
Moreover, BPS data on imported liquors from Malaysia and Singapore is far behind the export data from both nations. In 2013, BPS noted imported liquors of 3.6 million liters, while the total number of exported liquors from both Malaysia and Singapore reached 25.6 million liters.
The massive gap caused the custom agency to wage an operation, resulting in the detaining of 24 trucks of 122,000 illegal imported liquors in Palembang, Lampung, and Merak on October 31. The total loss that Indonesia would have suffered from the illegal liquor was Rp52 billion which is covered in-depth in Tempo Magazine as issued today.
AKBAR TRI KURNIAWAN