BERITA TERKINI
JAKARTA, DDTCNews - At least 2 taxation issues garnered the most public attention over the past week. First, the issue of tax prepayments (ijon pajak in Indonesian). Second, the policy on a potential increase in the personal tax relief (penghasilan tidak kena pajak/PTKP) threshold next year.
The issue of tax prepayments was initially raised by the Minister of Finance Regulation, Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa. The government floated the idea of tax prepayments, i.e., requesting taxpayers to remit their tax liabilities for the coming year in advance, with the aim of mitigating this year's tax revenue shortfall.
Following the minister of finance’s statement, Director General of Taxes, Bimo Wijayanto, also addressed the issue. According to him, the policy implemented by the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) is, in fact, a form of dynamism, i.e., adjusting Art. 25 Income Tax instalments to better reflect the income received by taxpayers in the current year.
“During the ongoing tax year, the DGT is authorised to adjust the amount of instalments to reflect income patterns that differ from the previous year, or certain types of irregular income or changes in business scale as well as the growth in the taxpayer’s business,” stated Bimo.
In the absence of such dynamism, the monthly Art. 25 Income Tax instalments payable by taxpayers are determined based on the total tax payable in the previous year, net of available tax credits.
Through dynamism, Bimo claimed that the DGT seeks to reduce tax underpayment or Art. 29 Income Tax, which must be settled by taxpayers before filing the annual tax returns.
“This is intended to ensure that the instalments paid by the taxpayers during the current year, to the greatest extent possible, approximate the amount of tax that should be payable at the end of the year. What is the context? So as to reduce the burden of underpayment of taxpayers when they file their annual tax returns in 2026,” said Bimo.
As for the potential increase in the personal income tax relief threshold, Director of Economic and Fiscal Strategy, Febrio Kacaribu, firmly stated that there are no plans to raise the personal tax relief threshold in 2026.
Indonesia’s personal tax relief threshold for individual taxpayers has remained unchanged in the last 1 decade. The prevailing provisions on the personal tax relief continue to refer to the Minister of Finance Regulation (MoF Reg.) 101/2016.
“There is none; there are no plans yet [to adjust personal tax relief next year],” he told reporters at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs Office.
Personal tax relief refers to a deduction from the net income of an individual taxpayer in determining the amount of taxable income. Pursuant to MoF Reg. 101/2016, the personal tax relief threshold for an unmarried individual taxpayer without dependants (TK/0) amounts to IDR54 million per year or IDR4.5 million per month.
Simply put, if the income of an individual taxpayer does not exceed the personal tax relief threshold of IDR54 million per year, he/she is not liable for income tax.
Members of the public and entrepreneurs had voiced calls for an increase in the personal tax relief threshold. Raising the personal tax relief threshold would imply greater employees’ take-home pay, which, in turn, is expected to boost household consumption.
In addition to the 2 issues above, several other engaging topics also merit attention. These include a civil review of the Tax Court Law, the extension of the validity period of billing codes, the latest realisation of tax revenues and updates on the number of taxpayers who have activated their coretax system accounts.
The Ministry of Finance recorded tax revenue realisation as of November 2025 at IDR1,634.43 trillion, equivalent to 74.65% of the tax revenue target in the 2025 State Budget (anggaran penerimaan dan belanja negara/APBN in Indonesian) of IDR2,189.3 trillion.
Compared to the realisation as of November 2024, which stood at IDR1,688.64 trillion, tax revenue this year remains contracted by 3.21%.
“In November 2025, our tax collection progress or performance improved compared to the figures recorded in October,” said Deputy Minister of Finance, Suahasil Nazara.
A legal entity, PT Arion Indonesia, filed a civil review against Art. 78 of Law No. 14/2002 concerning the Tax Court with the Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi/MK in Indonesian).
One of PT Arion Indonesia’s lawyers, Kahfi Permana, admitted that he had suffered losses due to a tax court decision rendered pursuant to Art. 78 of the Tax Court Law. The article concerned stipulates that Tax Court decisions are made based on the results of the evidentiary assessment and pursuant to the relevant statutory tax regulations as well as based on the judge's conviction.
“In the a quo case, the applicant suffered concrete, specific and actual losses as a private legal entity due to the premature application of Art. 78 of the Tax Court Law, as stated in the Tax Court Decision Number PUT-007055.99/2024/PP/M.XIVA of 2025 dated 19 November 12025,” claimed Kahfi.
Director General of Taxes, Bimo Wijayanto, has extended the validity period of billing codes from 7 days to 14 days. The extension applies to billing codes generated since 17 December 2025.
The DGT announced the extension through Announcement No. PENG-4/PJ/2025 concerning the Extension of the Active Period of Billing Codes to Support the Exercise of Tax Rights and Fulfilment of Tax Obligations.
“... It is necessary to determine a special policy in the form of an extension of the validity period of a billing code to 336 hours or 14 x 24 hours from the time the billing code is issued,” reads one of the points of PENG-4/PJ/2025.
DGT has assured that the coretax system will operate smoothly when taxpayers file their annual income tax returns for the 2025 tax year, which starts at the beginning of next year.
Minister of Finance, Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, stated that DGT had conducted simultaneous coretax login tests. According to him, such a measure was intended to assess the reliability of the servers and the new tax administration system.
“Yesterday, we tested simultaneous logins by more than 60,000 users on Coretax, and the system ran accordingly,” he said.
The DGT noted that only 7.7 million taxpayers have activated their taxpayer accounts through the coretax system.
Director General of Taxes, Bimo Wijayanto, said the total number of taxpayers required to file their annual tax returns in 2024 reached 14.9 million. Accordingly, the number of taxpayers who have activated their Coretax accounts stands at only about half, or 51.66%.
“The number of taxpayers required to file 2024 tax returns is 14.9 million. Meanwhile, those who have activated coretax accounts total 7.7 million, resulting in a percentage of 51.66%,” he said. (sap)
