Govt's arrears in tax refunds to PSCs reach US$150 million
Saturday, April 2 2005 - 03:05 AM WIB
The government's arrears in value added tax (VAT) refunds to oil and gas production sharing contractors (PSCs) reached a total of US$150 million during 2004, Bisnis Indonesia reported on Saturday.
Suyitno Patmosukismo, the executive director of the Indonesian Petroleum Association (IPA), said in Jakarta on Friday that the VAT reimbursement to PSCs totaled about US$20 million per month.
"About US$150 million of the total tax refunds in 2004 had not been reimbursed. In 2003, all the VAT refunds had been paid," he was quoted as saying.
According to the existing regulation, the VAT tax refund to old contractors should be paid within 60 days, and those to new contractors should be paid within 120 days. However, in the reality, the contractors could only receive the reimbursement between six to seven months after the transactions.
Suyitno said that the reimbursement of the VAT payment to PSCs still faced many problems partly due to the long bureaucracy in the tax office. (*)