On quest of environmental tax implementation in Indonesia

Abstract

The number of research evaluating the implementation of environmental tax using regulatory cost perspective is still limited. Whereas, this type of research is quite crucial in formulating tax policy to find the balance between regulatory function, revenue productivity and its impact on maintaining conducive business climate. Therefore, this research is aimed to elaborate types of environmental taxes applied in Indonesia, to map the problems arised of their implementation and their impact on regulatory compliance cost. This research occupied postpositivism paradigm with mixed method approach. The data were gathered through qualitative and quantitative technique. The result shows that eventhough Indonesia has not implement explicity a new environmental tax, there are a lot of quasi-environmental tax scatterly levied by local government and provincial government due to their authority given by the decentralization besides the corporate social responsibility performed by the business entities. Unfortunately, the reallocation budget framework on the tax/charged levied from the quasi-environmental tax has not been clear. Thus, it is essential to establish a comprehensive environmental tax with an integrated roadmap considering and accomodating the former quasi-environmental tax into a one package environmental tax policy with clear concept of earmarking with efficient collection cost.