FORKALIM and LP3N UI (Lembaga Penelitaan Perpajakan dan Penerimaan Negara/State Income and Tax Research Center of University of Indonesia), with support from USAID IUWASH PLUS, organized a FGD on the VAT policy reconstruction for waste water services, held in Jakarta on November 11, 2019.
Present at the FGD were the representatives of the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, Ministry of Public Work and Housing, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Home Affairs, and BAPPENAS. Members of PERPAMSI and FORKALIM were in attendance to represent waste water operators.
In order to support the VAT policy reconstruction for waste water services, USAID IUWASH PLUS is engaging LP3N UI to develop an academic ‘white paper’.
Through this event, LP3N UI collected information on the wastewater operators’ business and activities, including how VAT impacts the industry.
For the customers, the VAT imposition to the wastewater services significantly increases the direct financial cost. As such, customers will pay an unnecessarily higher price for the service, a cost many are not keen to pay in the first place.
Also, for the operator’s side, the complexity of tax management often makes the operator incur cost and leads to a less healthy financial condition. Therefore, a more appropriate VAT policy is crucial to make waste water services flourish
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“[The FGD] is important as it is does not only talk about the VAT for waste water service, but also about governing the nation because access to water and waste water service are human’s rights,” said FORKALIM Chairperson, Subekti.
To learn further about the wastewater business process, LP3N UI will visit USAID IUWASH PLUS supported wastewater operators in Medan and Solo in the end of November 2019.
The lessons learned from these visits will help to inform the academic paper, with an aim to share it with FORKALIM in December 2019.
Further, FORKALIM will then submit the paper to the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs as fact-based evidence in the VAT policy reconstruction for wastewater services.
