Jakarta – The Taxation Directorate General saw a significant increase in tax disputes in 2018 following a government tax amnesty held from July 2016 to March 2017.

The tax office dealt with 11,436 cases last year, compared to 9,579 the year before.

When taxpayers applied for the tax amnesty, they were required to withdraw their complaints from the tax office and only required to pay their unpaid taxes, without fines, according to tax office spokesman Hestu Yoga Seksama.

To reduce the number of tax disputes, the tax office plans to improve its procedure for making tax payments, including eradicating multi-interpretations of existing regulations, Hestu said, adding that the tax office would also improve the quality of tax underpayment assessments.

"We will revitalize the assessment procedures. We will only focus on investigating taxpayers, who were disobedient as supported by high-quality data, and we also believe that the result of the investigation is significant," he added as quoted by kontan.co.id

He said that in an effort to improve the quality of assessments, the Taxation Directorate General had issued circular No. 15/PJ/2018 on the tax assessment policy, which includes an order to review the performance of tax officers to improve the performance in carrying out investigations.

He added that the tax office had also revoked irrelevant regulations that caused multi-interpretations. (bbn)

Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/02/18/number-of-disputes-increases-after-tax-amnesty.html