E-Audit Mechanism Will Cut Tax Audit Time

KATADATA - The new electronic tax audit mechanism is currently being reviewed by the Directorate General of Taxation. Checking annual tax returns now takes less time. This new technology will also allow the directorate to share data with other directorates or agencies in a more integrated way.

Edi Slamet Irianto, Director of Tax Inspection and Collection, said the tax office does not have enough staffs to deal with huge amount of paperwork manually. The new e-audit mechanism cuts the time needed to do the job by 70 percent.

Edi also said that this new system is better because data can be directly submitted to the tax office database. This will help the office create a more comprehensive database, containing legal evidence of those who have paid their taxes and those who have not. 

He added that people who were trying to be law-abiding citizens were uncomfortable with manual auditing because of the time it took to process tax returns. 

Mekar Satria Utama, a spokesperson for the Directorate General of Taxation, said that under the new system, tax office staffs would only have to open up one file at a time. Previously, staffs must open numerous paper documents to check returns manually.

Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Darmin Nasution said that the tax office is going to integrate its IT department with other directorates under the Finance Ministry. Darmin claimed this step would create a more accurate database which can be accessed online.

Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro confirmed the news, adding that this move was driven by a World Bank statement saying that the IT department of the Indonesian tax office had fallen behind those of other countries. This situation hindered Indonesia increasing its ratio of tax collection to GDP, or tax ratio. 

At 11.3 percent, Indonesia’s tax ratio is much lower than other ASEAN countries’, including Thailand, which recorded a tax ratio of more than 15 percent.