Indonesia: New policy to allow tax authorities to access banks’ taxpayer data

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Indonesia: New policy to allow tax authorities to access banks’ taxpayer data

Karyadi-Freddy
Oct16

Freddy Karyadi

Danny Tanuwijaya

As the tax amnesty period comes to an end soon, the Indonesian tax authority has prepared its next plan to improve tax revenue and tax compliance.

The tax authority intends to focus on taxpayers who have not participated in the tax amnesty but have not declared all of their taxable assets. One of the mechanisms the tax authority plans to use to detect undeclared assets is to access taxpayer data in banks in Indonesia.

On January 6 2017, the Minister of Finance issued the Minister of Finance Regulation No. 12/KMK.03/2017 on the Stipulation of Application, Application Procedures, Electronic Official Scripts, and Special Code for Official Scripts, Electronic Application for the Disclosure of Bank Secrecy (MoF Regulation 12/2017).

MoF Regulation 12/2017 introduced an electronic application called "Akasia" as the way to apply the request for the disclosure of bank secrecy for taxation purposes. Bank secrecy under MoF Regulation 12/2017 has a broad meaning, where it has been defined as anything related to information on the depositor and his/her savings.

As background, a bank is a third party that establishes a relationship with taxpayers and is bound with confidentiality obligations. For the purposes of inspection, preliminary evidence assessment, the investigation of a tax crime, tax billing, and objection processes, then such confidentiality obligations are abolished through a written request from the Minister of Finance to the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Financial Services Authority.

A written request is based on the proposal from the Directorate General of Taxation and can be submitted through an electronic application. Akasia is introduced to serve this purpose and is expected to provide legal certainty and encourage the acceleration and increase of effectiveness in requesting the information or evidence from banks by replacing the previous manual process.

Akasia is an information system software for the management of the application for the disclosure of bank secrecy, which is network-based, to record, upload supporting documents, give approval, and print the request for the disclosure of bank secrecy, and as the means for information and monitoring the request for the disclosure of bank secrecy.

Freddy Karyadi (fkaryadi@abnrlaw.com) and Danny Tanuwijaya (dtanuwijaya@abnrlaw.com), Jakarta

Ali Budiardjo, Nugroho, Reksodiputro, Law Offices

Tel: +62 21 250 5125

Website: www.abnrlaw.com

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