Sunday night, after we finished gathering the local residents, we gentlemen chatted nonchalantly. And suddenly, Mr. Paul asked me rather seriously.
Sorry, Mr. What is the government going to do with this? How come times are more difficult, the Covid pandemic has just ended, how come income up to 5 million wants to be taxed again at 5%? Wow, the burden of life is getting heavier!
Confide was scattered because it will have an impact on his income. After Mr. Paul finished confiding in me, I said, “Oh, sorry Mr. Paul. Be careful, you get hoaxed.”
Hoax is an adaptation of the word “hoax” in English which means fake news. According to KBBI, hoax is false information. The information contains facts or truths that have been altered with convincing information but cannot be verified.
According to Prof. M. Alwi Dahlan, a communications expert from the University of Indonesia who is also a former Minister of Information, hoax is manipulation of news that is deliberately carried out to give a false confession or understanding. In the hoax there is a distortion of facts that makes it interesting. In accordance with its purpose, hoaxes are created to get attention.
Behavior of Indonesian Netizens
Talking about hoaxes cannot be separated from the behavior of social media actors or netizens. In February 2021, Microsoft issued a new report which, among other things, measures the level of decency or internet users with the title 2020 Digital Civility Index (DCI).
Globally, the Netherlands is the country with the most polite citizens, aka the first rank. While in Southeast Asia and Asia in general, Singapore is in the top position and fourth globally. How about Indonesia? Of the 32 countries studied by Microsoft, Indonesia’s position is quite sad because it is ranked 29th, the lowest in Southeast Asia!
Hoax attacks a lot with various topics. According to the Katadata Insight Center (KIC) survey entitled “2021 Indonesia’s Digital Literacy Status”, as many as 69.3% of respondents stated that politics is the topic of content that contains the most hoax issues or fake news in 2021.
The content topics considered by respondents contain many hoaxes, the next is health by 39.7%. Followed by religious and environmental topics with 29.2% and 21.4% respectively. The survey does not include a percentage of tax topics. Does that mean the topic of taxation doesn’t exist?
Of course there are always hoaxes about the topic of taxation, one of which is about income of IDR 5 million subject to a 5% tax discussed at the beginning of this article. Maybe we still remember the hoax that groceries will be taxed, then the hoax that with an individual’s NPWP changing to a NIK then all Indonesian residents will be taxed. Even a few years ago, there was a hoax that buying airplane tickets had to include a NPWP, and there were costs for making NPWP and tax services.
Indeed, so far the hoaxes on the topic of taxation have not caused significant disruption to tax revenues. However, never ignore hoaxes because hoaxes can be destructive. Several incidents of riots and social divisions arose due to hoaxes. The Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) as the main party carrying out the state’s duty to collect taxes is one of the targets of hoax publishers.
DGT has often made a series of efforts to ward off these tax hoaxes. The Directorate of Counseling, Service and Public Relations also frequently releases information to rectify misinformation circulating in the community. The tax service office (KPP) and the tax service, counseling and consulting office (KP2KP) as DGT’s frontline through their social media also participate.
In some cases, even Sri Mulyani as the Minister of Finance intervened to suppress hoaxes. Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani denied rumors that workers with a salary of IDR 5 million per month would be taxed.
“Salary of 5 million is taxed at 5%, THAT’S WRONG..!!! NEWS TITLE regarding Government Regulation 55/2022 regarding income tax MAKES EMOTIONAL NETIZENS..! For a salary of 5 million there is NO CHANGE in the tax rules,” wrote Sri on her official Instagram account @smindrawati in Jakarta, Tuesday (3/1/2023).
The thing to watch out for as a new tax hoax is the regulation regarding in-kind receipts for employees. Don’t let this become ammunition for hoax publishers to launch a new “attack” on the DGT. Hoaxes Tax issues can be fried for workers and workers, giving the impression that the government is doing injustice to employees and workers. And as usual, in the end, hoax publishers always call for a boycott of paying taxes. The funny thing is, they don’t realize that so far they have also been enjoying tax revenues such as fuel subsidies, infrastructure development, Covid-19 vaccination, BLT, and others.
To ward off hoaxes is certainly not only the work of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics and the Ministry of Finance, but is a joint work especially for all DGT employees. Quite a number of DGT employees come from millennial groups who have followers and are active on social media. It is hoped that the DGT leadership can embrace the millennial group and all DGT employees to play an active role in counteracting this hoax.
Don’t forget informal channels such as arisan, community meetings, community meetings, school or campus class reunions as a means of tax information. Of course, it requires its own wisdom, concise and simple language and the duration of conveying information is not too long.
The duration of time should not be long because it will be boring, causing the main message to be forgotten and not conveyed. Can you imagine, for example, a reunion event which is a gathering to miss old friends can disband if it is inserted with a tax counseling event using a conventional approach.
Informal channels cannot be ruled out because they can touch parties who are not touched by social media, there is also trust from recipients of information because those who convey it are parties who have close emotional, cultural and background backgrounds.