Indonesia’s e-commerce marketplaces will start collecting income tax from sellers on their platforms starting from November 1, the country’s tax office said late on Wednesday, after Jakarta delayed the plan for a second time to boost purchasing power.
“This postponement was implemented as an effort to maintain public purchasing power amid economic conditions that remain a focus of the government,” the tax office said.
Income tax already collected from the sellers will be refunded, the tax office added.
Tokopedia, controlled by ByteDance’s TikTok and partly owned by Indonesia’s biggest tech company GoTo, together with Sea Limited’s Shopee, the Alibaba-backed Lazada, and Blibli, have been appointed as tax collectors, the government previously said.
The tax office said in the statement that it will cancel the appointments of those four marketplaces and re-issue the selection at a later stage.
In response, Indonesia’s e-commerce industry association idEA said on Wednesday that the marketplaces have been making preparations to enable the collection to run more smoothly when it finally takes place.
Jakarta originally intended to implement the tax collection plan last year but delayed it to this year following complaints from sellers and platforms.
Reuters
