Indonesia accelerates digital tax reforms amid the COVID-19 outbreak

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the government of Indonesia to start collecting taxes from digital services sooner than planned, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said. Initially, the tax collection was set to be passed into law by the House of Representatives later this year. The government understands services like Netflix and Amazon Prime have been doing more businesses during the pandemic as people observe physical distancing and spend most of their time working from home. The tax includes cloud meeting app Zoom and streaming service Netflix, after a decree enacted by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo granted the Tax Office the power to boost tax revenues.