BERITA TERKINI
JAKARTA, DDTCNews – The tax authority has outlined a number of challenges it faces in collecting state revenues in 2026. These challenges have garnered considerable attention from netizens over the past week.
This year’s tax revenue target is far from easy to achieve, set at IDR 2,357.7 trillion, representing an increase of 7.6% from the 2025 target of IDR2,189.3 trillion. Moreover, revenue realisation in the previous year was also less than stellar.
Against this backdrop, the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) faces several major challenges in pursuing the 2026 tax target. Director General of Taxes, Bimo Wijayanto, highlighted a number of issues that must be addressed to fulfil this year’s target, ranging from the baseline of tax revenues and the large number of unregistered economic actors to the stagnation in the number of taxpayers.
“Our main challenges, apart from tax buoyancy and tax commodity, are strengthening the baseline of our core revenue sources,” he said at the Outlook for Indonesia’s Economy and Taxation 2026 seminar organised by the Institute of Indonesia Chartered Accountants (Ikatan Akuntan Indonesia/IAI in Indonesian).
In further detail, the DGT is confronting six key challenges this year. First, the tax revenue base needs to be strengthened by improving compliance. Second, there remain many economic actors that should be registered but have yet to be captured in the system.
DGT records indicate that only 90 million taxpayers are registered in the coretax administration system data. Of these, 65 million are classified as non-effective taxpayers. Meanwhile, only 25 million have active taxpayer identification numbers (TIN) and just 15 million actively file and pay taxes.
“As such, there is a gap of 10 million [taxpayers]. We will look into this. We will visit them one by one and apply geo-tagging. They will be placed into our monitoring basket for much closer scrutiny,” Bimo explained.
Third, some taxpayers are already willing to comply but experience technical or administrative constraints. Bimo stated that tax officers will intensify services, both manually through tax offices and through online data and information services.
Fourth, there are supervisory challenges related to changes in taxpayer behaviour or business models. Examples include the practice of splitting businesses into smaller entities (firm splitting) and behavioural shifts driven by the transition toward a digital economy.
“Frankly speaking, when the 0.5% final MSME income tax incentive was introduced, we detected a great deal of taxpayer behaviour emerging in this comfort zone. Once they approach the IDR4.8 billion threshold, there is a bunching effect, followed by firm splitting to keep turnover below the threshold,” Bimo elaborated.
Fifth, there is the challenge of collecting long-outstanding tax arrears from high-risk business sectors. According to Bimo, the DGT must carefully manage collection measures, as many taxpayers have limited capacity to settle their liabilities.
Sixth, the number of taxpayers has remained relatively stagnant over the past few years, making it necessary for DGT to expand the base of active taxpayers.
“We need to expand the active taxpayer base, as the number of taxpayers has been stagnant from year to year,” Bimo emphasized.
Beyond the challenges surrounding 2026 tax revenues, several other tax-related developments over the past week have also attracted attention. These include the rising number of coretax activations, the discovery of a village producing fake tax invoices and the latest updates on corruption scandals within the DGT.
DGT reported that the number of taxpayers activating their coretax accounts continues to rise.
Currently, taxpayers who have activated their tax accounts through the coretax system have reached 12.15 million, representing 86.79% of DGT’s target of 14 million account activations.
“With regard to the progress of Coretax DGT account activations, the number of taxpayers that have activated their accounts has reached 12,153,071 [12.15 million],” said Rosmauli, Director of Tax Dissemination, Services and Public Relations at the DGT.
DGT claims to have apprehended several taxpayers involved in issuing fake tax invoices, resulting in state losses of up to IDR 180 billion.
Director General Bimo Wijayanto noted that many problematic taxpayers commit crimes by issuing fictitious invoices to obtain tax refunds. This modus operandi is also known as issuing tax invoices not based on actual transactions (tidak berdasarkan transaksi sebenarnya/TBTS in Indonesian).
“This year, we have successfully uncovered a network of fictitious invoices that caused state losses of nearly IDR180 billion. It was quite massive,” he remarked.
Minister of Finance Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa replaced the head of the North Jakarta Regional Office of the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT Regional Office), although the official was not directly implicated in the sting operation (operasi tangkap tangan/OTT in Indonesian) conducted by the Corruption Eradication Commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi/KPK in Indonesian).
Purbaya stated that the head of a DGT regional office bears responsibility for events occurring within his/her jurisdiction. Accordingly, the replacement of the head of the North Jakarta DGT Regional Office is deemed necessary in response to the Corruption Eradication Commission’s sting operation on tax offices involving tax officials in the area.
“I simply want to convey a message to senior tax officials that if their subordinates cause problems and they fail to detect anything, it does not mean they can escape responsibility,” Purbaya said.
Minister of Finance Purbaya revealed that audits have been conducted on the bank account balances of officials within the Ministry of Finance.
According to Purbaya, he has access to examine the accounts of Ministry of Finance officials. However, the audits conducted to date have been limited to officials from echelon I to echelon III.
“I have access to my officials’ accounts. I have reviewed up to echelon III, as they are the ones with the potential for promotion. When those below seek promotion, we will review them as well. I also review echelon I,” he explained.
Minister of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Maman Abdurrahman, during a working meeting with the House of Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat/DPR in Indonesian) Commission VII, reaffirmed the extension of the utilisation period for the 0.5% final income tax scheme for MSMEs.
Although the revision of Gov. Reg. 55/2022 has not yet been issued, the government remains committed to extending the application of the final MSME income tax scheme. According to Maman, the 0.5% final income tax reflects the government’s support for MSMEs.
“The fact is that taxes, including tax incentives for MSMEs, have been extended,” he claimed. (sap/Daisy Anita)
