Taxation in Democratic State: Quo Vadis Indonesia?

Abstract

Public participation and interaction among state actors’ in the process of tax policy formulation is a fundamental mechanism undertaken in a democratic state in realizing the agreeable policy. Indonesian taxpayers and citizens as members of a democratic state need to quest to what extend state actors have participated in the process of agenda-setting until the tax policy has been published to the public. This research is intended to scrutinize the dynamic roles of state actors' behavior and stakeholders on the tax policy process in Indonesia and how the measures should be taken to encourage their participation including on improving tax compliance. By using a qualitative paradigm, this research is done through documentation, deep interview, literature study, and technical data analysis in the form of qualitative data analysis with the inductive method. The result shows that parts of the component of state actors did not have a similar level of knowledge and concern on the taxation issue. The taxation issues would only in the interest of certain actors in which economic activity such as business entity when they directly affect them. Therefore, the discussion on taxation solely relates to how to optimize the state revenue and how the collected revenue could be spent. Public participation in the tax policy formulation process needs to be optimized so that tax compliance among society can be boosted.