Indonesia\u2019s tax office will investigate Alphabet Inc\u2019sGoogle for suspected unpaid taxes from billions of dollars\u2019 worth of advertising revenue, a senior finance ministry official said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Muhammad Hanif, head of the specials cases branch in the tax office, said Google\u2019s refusal to cooperate after it was sent a letter in April requesting to be allowed to examine the company\u2019s tax reports had raised suspicions.<\/p>\n
He told a news conference that the probe would not be launched until the end of the month at the earliest.<\/p>\n
PT Google Indonesia, incorporated in 2011, said it was complying with the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to cooperate fully with local authorities and pay all applicable taxes,\u201d a Google Indonesia spokesman said in an emailed response to questions.<\/p>\n
The government had also asked to examine the tax reports of the Indonesian offices of three other U.S. Internet based companies – Yahoo (YHOO.O), Twitter (TWTR.N) and Facebook (FB.O).<\/p>\n
Those three companies have complied, officials said.<\/p>\n
Yahoo and Google have formed Indonesian limited liability companies, while Twitter and Facebook operate branches of their Asia-Pacific offices in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
The government believes these companies owe income and value added tax on billions of dollars of revenue they generate from advertising in Indonesia, the tax office said.<\/p>\n
Hanif said Google\u2019s Indonesian entity was only allocated around 4 percent of the total revenues generated from the country, and it was this amount that was taxed, which he described as too small and \u201cunfair\u201d.<\/p>\n
The communications ministry had estimated the value of digital advertising in Indonesia at about $800 million last year. The ministry said all of it was untaxed.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate explanation for the wide discrepancy of the two agencies\u2019 estimates for digital advertising revenue.<\/p>\n
Indonesia is facing a sizeable revenue shortfall this year as the resource-rich country can no longer rely on commodity-related income.<\/p>\n
In a separate development, the tax office said it is checking whether Ford Motor Co (F.N) had avoided paying appropriate taxes, after a local newspaper reported that the U.S. car maker modified imported Everest model vehicles sold in Indonesia to pay a lower tax rate.<\/p>\n
If the car maker is proven to have caused state losses, it may have to pay back taxes of up to four times the amount it owed, according to Indonesian law.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have always strictly complied with all Indonesia government regulations and policy, including all import-related tax and customs requirements, related to each of our Ford vehicles officially marketed and sold in the country,\u201d a Ford spokesman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indonesia\u2019s tax office will investigate Alphabet Inc\u2019sGoogle for suspected unpaid taxes from billions of dollars\u2019 worth of advertising revenue, a senior finance ministry official said on Thursday. Muhammad Hanif, head of the specials cases branch in the tax office, said Google\u2019s refusal to cooperate after it was sent a letter in April requesting to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31975,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31973\/revisions\/31975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}