JakartaPost-March 13, 2025
State revenue dropped sharply in the first two months of 2025, and signs point to the haphazard implementation of the new taxation system Coretax as a contributing factor, though the Finance Ministry remains tight-lipped on the matter. In a press conference on Thursday, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati revealed that state revenue in January and February totaled Rp 316.9 trillion (US$19.24 billion), which amounts to an almost 21-percent decline from the same two-month period of last year. Deputy Finance Minister Anggito Abimanyu attributed the plunge to a drop in commodity prices and to “administrative factors”, including tax restitution, as well as to leniency regarding the timely payment of value added tax. Initially meant to be fully implemented at the turn of the year, the Coretax system has proved to be defective as the website is often unstable and slow, leading to the loading of blank pages and, in many cases, failure to issue tax invoices. The government and the House of Representatives agreed in mid-February that the full implementation of Coretax be postponed, allowing the public to use the prevailing taxation system. A source within the Taxation Directorate General, told The Jakarta Post on March 7 that their branch office had noted a 30-percent year-on-year (yoy) decline in tax revenue in January, primarily due to the troublesome new IT infrastructure. In separate press statements, the East Java and Papua branch offices blamed the drop in tax collection in their respective jurisdictions on the switch to the Coretax system, CNBC Indonesia reported. The press statements were later taken down and Coretax, repeatedly hailed by the government as a system that would optimize revenue collection, was not even mentioned once during Thursday’s three-hour press conference. Regional Representatives Council member Ahmad Nawardi revealed on Feb. 18 that the tax office had only issued 20 million tax invoices in January, down from 60 million a year earlier, according to media reports, and that tax revenue for the month had plunged to Rp 50 trillion from Rp 172 trillion in January 2024. Read more at:
