REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SEMARANG -- The Indonesian government assures that taxpayers will no longer be able to hide assets overseas after the end of the tax amnesty program on March 31, 2017.

"We will implement the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) program," Head of the Directorate General of Taxation for Central Java I Irawan said here on Monday.

He stated that the AEOI program of transparent taxation data will be exchanged among countries. The Indonesian government is planning to carry out the program in 2018.

"With the implementation of the AEOI program, taxpayers will not be able to hide their assets overseas from the tax authorities. Taxpayers who do not join the recent tax amnesty program for fear of uncovering their assets will be exposed with the implementation of the AEOI program," Irawan noted.

The AEOI program was agreed in a meeting by the finance ministers of a number of countries. The finance ministers in the meeting were convinced that taxpayers who hide assets overseas would be exposed.

All countries based on the regulation will exchange information under the taxation authorities. All people in each of the countries are obliged to abide by the provisions.

He remarked that the implementation of the program will be followed up with the revision of the bank law on data openness for taxation.

The Finance Ministry and the Financial Service Authority (OJK) have launched a license system to provide access to bank accounts for tax investigation through Application for Proposal to Unveil Bank Secrecy (Akasia) and Application for Unveiling Bank Secrecy (Akrab).

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said last month that the system could simplify the process of opening data on the accounts of bank customers for tax investigation.

"Opening data about the account of a bank customer for tax investigation would take around 239 working days with 20 officials to sign," the minister noted at the office of the Taxation Directorate General.

Through applications of Akrab and Akasia, which are connected to each other in a system, the time could be cut short from originally more than six months to only two weeks, she remarked.

She revealed that she hoped the two-week time could still be made shorter to be comparable to the speed of the process of transferring bank account.

Apart from time efficiency, the applications are superior in automatic selection of features to speed up the process and system of grouping requests by banks.

The features reduce the number of letters of orders, making it easier to identify letters and providing data statistics of banks receiving the order to reveal bank secrecy.

However, the process of issuing the letter to order the revealing of bank secrecy has to follow the right procedure in line with the banking law and its implementation regulation.

With the memorandum of understanding, the Taxation Directorate General hopes coordination and cooperation between the two institutions would be more optimized to improve efficiency and effectiveness in carrying out their respective duties.

For the Taxation Directorate General, closer cooperation with OJK would make tax examination, investigation, and collection more effective.

"Adoption of the applications would optimize tax revenues to support national development programs," she pointed out.

Application of Akasia-Akrab also constitutes a concrete form of welcoming the era of transparency in automatic exchange of information. 

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