The ASEAN Customs Meeting Agrees With The Law Enforcement Principle And Optimizes State Revenue

JAKARTA Indonesia is holding the 33rd Meeting of the ASEAN Customs Administration which is part of the Customs Enforcement and Compliance Working Group (CECWG) in a series of INDONESIAN Presence agendas in ASEAN 2023.

The event, which will be held on February 7-9, 2023 in Nusa Dua, Bali in a hybrid manner, continues to discuss the ASEAN agenda in the field of law enforcement and customs compliance with the presence of friends from Japan and Australia.

Head of the Communication Bureau of the Ministry of Finance Rahayu Puspasari said this meeting was held to provide updates on the development of activity implementation in the Strategic Plan 2021-2025.

"We encourage the discussion of customs audits, law enforcement and mutual assistance, as well as public security and public protection," he said as reported by the official website on Wednesday, February 8.

Rahayu explained, the Ministry of Finance held an activity in the form of increasing cooperation between customs administration and tax authorities in ASEAN.

It is stated that this initiative is carried out through the preparation of the ASEAN Guideline on Cooperation between Customs Administration and Tax Authority as one of the outputs which is expected to be under the Priority Economic Deliverables (PED).

Indonesia as the Country Coordinator of Post Clearance Audit has initiated increased cooperation by drafting a Guideline concept that can be used as a guideline or best practices in ASEAN. This initiative was proposed by Indonesia since 2013 through the implementation of a Joint Audit between the Directorate General of Customs and Excise and the Directorate General of Taxes to the international realm within the ASEAN region," he said.

Sri Mulyani's subordinate also said that this synergy was the basis for implementing five pillars of reform, namely legislation, business processes, organizational structure, human resources (HR), as well as information technology and databases.

"The implementation of cooperation between customs administration and tax authorities in ASEAN is expected to optimize state revenues, reduce the risk of leakage of receipts, and improve services to taxpayers," he stressed.

Rahayu added that the synergy between customs and tax authorities includes data exchange, joint analysis, joint examination, and even joint investigations in the event that there is sufficient initial evidence about fraud.

"This guideline is expected to be useful for the customs authority of every ASEAN member country in improving cooperation mechanisms that can be adapted to certain situations and conditions for cooperation with stronger tax authorities," he concluded.