For stronger tax authority

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For stronger tax authority

Politik dan Birokrasi Budi Suyanto 23 Oct 2019 The Jakarta Post

The government's plan to give greater authority and autonomy to the Directorate General of Taxation seems much closer to realization. However, learning from the experiences of other countries that have developed strong revenue service agencies, there are at two key prerequisites for a semiautonomous state revenue agency (SRA). First, internal-control mechanism for the planned SRA. The provision should include such technical detils as rules on how the governing board (commissioners) and officials of the internal-control departement should be recruited, how the SRA's operations should be audited and how and to whom the SRA should give its accountability. We should magnanimously concede that the main barrier so far has not been due to its lack of autonomy, but rather the lack of integrity and technical competence of many of its officials. The second prerequisite is that the annual tax returns of all tax auditors and other senior executives recruited for the new revenue agency should first be examined and cross-checked against their bank accounts as well as their asset declarations and those of their spouses to confirm their integrity.