An Afternoon at the Tax Office

Today, 31 March 2009 is the last day for submitting annual tax report (SPT) with the Tax Office. For this reason, I have spent the last few days preparing my personal tax report & submitted it this afternoon with the Tax Office located close to my domicile.

I arrived at 3.30 pm & found that the Tax Office has changed their way of receiving the reports. In the past I usually placed my report on a writing paper envelope and hand it over to the officer in charge, who would ask me to wait until my name is called. After that an officer would check my documents, if complete he/she will give me a receipt. The time for process depends on the number of people submitting the report. Usually during the last days, it can take at least one hour.
But today it is different, when I got there an officer asked me to get a special envelope freely provided by the office and write on it my name, taxpayer number (NPWP) and my phone number. After that I was asked to take a queuing number. I got number 518, at that time it was the turn for number 470. After twenty minutes, my number was called and I was asked to meet a lady officer who took my envelope and gave me a receipt without opening the envelope. She said that if my report were not complete a tax officer would call me on the phone. She also explained that they have to change the way of receiving reports because this year there are so many reports compared to previous years. This is the consequence of our government’s policy to require working citizens to have taxpayer numbers. As a result, even office boys have to submit tax report now. At 4 pm, I left the Tax Office.

In conclusion, I felt that the new way of receiving Tax Report could be improved, i.e. instead of asking taxpayers to write on a special envelope freely provided by the Tax Office, it would be better if we just use our own envelope, so that we can directly queue for our turn, thus saving us time, and the Tax Office would be saving money by not providing the free envelope.