There are three things that can unite the Indonesian nation: football, the chilli price, and news of a tax that leaks before its explanation is ready. This week, the third took centre stage. I watched it unfold from my regular bench in the coffee shop, paying for my coffee with a QRIS code whose sticker had gone limp from being scanned so often. The coffee was still warm, but the conversation around me was hot enough to brew two cups at once.
It all began at an event in Jakarta. A figure from the business world, the chair of the advisory council of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the government would extend the collection of digital tax from 9 November 2026. The sentence was short, firm and highly shareable, three qualifications for a place in the family group chat. And within hours it had made a journey few policies ever make: from the conference room to the phones of the neighbours, and then to the hands of an aunt who typed in capital letters that one must be careful, because transfers to a lodger would be taxed. The rumour of a tax on bank transfers spread as quickly as gossip about a celebrity wedding, and the cashier at my regular shop even pinned up a small note reading paying cash is safer, a local regulation issued faster than any ministerial decree.
The official explanation came later, wearing a grand name. On Monday, 2 November, the Directorate General of Taxes, through its director of outreach, explained that what was meant was the System for Collecting Tax on Foreign Digital Transactions, abbreviated SPP-TDLN. The acronym sounds like the codename of an intelligence operation, yet it concerns the collection of value-added tax on digital goods and services from abroad, as set out in Finance Minister's Regulation No. 49 of 2026. According to the clarification, it is not a new tax, the VAT rate is unchanged, and not every foreign transaction is taxed. Personal fund transfers and remittances are not automatically caught by anything. If the VAT on a transaction has already been collected by a designated e-commerce operator, it will not be collected again, and members of the public need neither pay nor report it themselves.
The public breathed a sigh of relief, then realised they had just learned an acronym merely to make sure their snack money was safe. In a country where reciting the national principles by heart is not always fluent, we now have extra homework called SPP-TDLN. The national curriculum never lacks for burdens. And amid the relief came news that made the whole drama funnier still: according to the explanation, the system had in fact been running since 25 September. In other words, the policy had been sitting quietly in its chair for well over a month without anyone panicking, until someone announced it as though it had just been born. Rather like a guest who has already eaten at the café but is only introduced to the owner when the bill arrives.
The explanation itself, to be fair, makes decent sense. Until now, digital services from across the water, from streaming subscriptions to apps, have been enjoyed by residents here with VAT collected not always tidily, while local businesses have long remitted theirs dutifully. It is like two cafés side by side: one diligently issues tax receipts, while the other sells through a back window with no records at all. The aim of levelling the playing field, so that domestic entrepreneurs do not compete with one leg tied, deserves support. I am no tax adviser myself, and anyone who wants the details would do well to consult the Directorate General of Taxes directly. It is only that the pitch was declared level after the spectators had already assumed it was the stands that would be taxed.
Here lies the real problem. It is not in the formula, nor in the rate, but in the sequence. A good policy should be like a dinner: the dish served first, the recipe explained afterwards. Too often we are handed the recipe first, leaked early, followed by suspicions that the kitchen is preparing something sinister, while the dish arrives last bearing a label that reads Please do not panic. That label itself is enough to cause panic. History records that nobody has ever calmed down after hearing please stay calm. It is rather like an airport official saying there is nothing to worry about while running.
So the coffee shop, once again, becomes the most honest forum for policy. An app-based motorcycle-taxi rider, who happens to understand the flow of money in this city better than most, said that he had no objection to paying tax. He simply wanted to know which tax he was paying, where it went, and why he had heard about it in a group chat before any official announcement. His friend nodded, sipped his coffee, and added that if every government explanation were written as plainly as a car-park ticket, this country would long ago have become world champion of public trust. That remark may be too simple for an academic paper. But that is exactly why it is honest.
It is only fair to admit that the clarification came within days, not months, and that deserves credit. Yet even the most efficient fire brigade still arrives after the neighbours have been busily throwing buckets of their own. Announcement and explanation ought to come as a package, like coffee and sugar stirred together, not sugar arriving five minutes later, already cold. In communication, the first word always holds the advantage: it arrives first, and whoever follows must chase it, carrying corrections.
Heroes' Day is only a few days away. Perhaps this is the moment to widen the meaning of a hero: not only those who once took up bamboo spears, but also those who today can read three clarifications, two press releases and one fact-check, and still pay for their coffee by QRIS with a calm heart. They receive no medal. At best, a thousand rupiah in change that they never get round to collecting.
And if one day the government manages to explain a policy before the rumours spread, the public stands ready to award the highest honour they possess: not panicking. I finished my coffee that evening and left a little sediment at the bottom of the glass, for even sediment knows that trust is built from the right sequence, not from a grand acronym.
And should tax one day truly add to the people's burden, there is no cause for alarm, for the nation already has the most affordable way out and, so far, one free of VAT: to sing. All that is needed is a spoon for a microphone, a coffee glass for an audience, and one French ballad from the sixties, L'amour est bleu, said to have been performed by Claudine Longet. With modest voices and French pronunciation composed entirely on instinct, we shall render it with solemnity, from a hopeful blue to the grey we know so well on opening a bill. Nobody will understand every word, but everybody will grasp the feeling. Only one small prayer remains: that the singing in the coffee shop does not soon acquire a new acronym, because in this country a new acronym always arrives faster than its explanation.
