At last, no more dreadful ‘Fiskal’ fee for Indonesians… with a catch of course. I got this lead from some forum and SMSes before cross checked it with some mailing lists and of course the mainstream media. Indeed, as per 2009, all Indonesians who are travelling overseas will be exempted from paying ‘Fiskal’ IF (yes IF) they can show their tax identification number.

More info can be read here (its in Bahasa Indonesian btw) http://cetak.kompas.com/read/xml/2008/06/23/01061076/pemilik.npwp.bebas.bea.fiskal

Originally meant to limit people from flying (or in some cases sailing and driving) overseas and thus spending countries hard earned foreign reserves, ‘Fiskal’ is one of the lucrative source of income for Indonesian government. The Fiskal rate varies from Rp. 250000 (on land) to Rp. 1000000 (on plane) PER PERSON. You can do your own calculation on how much the country’s earn per outbound flight. Of course you need to assume there is no corruption - yeah rite.

Fiskal in my opinion has failed miserably to limit people from travelling overseas. After all, in this globalised age, people DO travel. In fact, other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore have stopped imposing this ludicrous tax.

On the other hand, the fact that Indonesian government still imposing ‘Fiskal’ to people who cannot show their tax ID (NPWP) is another telltale sign of ‘the country is desperate for money since people seldom pay tax properly’. I do not know whom to blame in this case. Cunning citizens, corrupt officials or simply government who WERE never bothered with the problem thanks to Indonesia’s past OIL export galore.

According to the media, out of 222 million population (year 2006 estimation), only 6 million taxpayers have been identified. Out of those 6 millions, only 1.3 million corporate taxpayers and 1.1 million private taxpayers have really paid the tax.

With the declining export, maybe its time to tap on  poor people’s money…