Tips in Choosing Tax Consultants

Berita terkini dari ARIS AVIANTARA Registered Tax Consultant

01/05/2009

The current condition really forces taxpayers to utilize tax consultant services. When this should be done, one thing for sure is being selective in choosing tax consultants. Legality, competency and ethics are the perfect combo to base the decision. In practice, there are a quite large number of tax consultants not having all of the criteria; few of them do not have even a single one.

Why Should Be Legalized?

The PMK No. 22/PMK.03/2008 and SE-16/PJ./2008 are the answer to this question. Besides requiring a special proxy from the taxpayers giving the authority, these regulations stipulate that the tax consultants appointed should fulfill the following:

a. Owning a Tax ID No.;
b. Having filed the Annual Income Tax Return of the latest tax year;
c. Owning Tax Consultant License from the Director General of Taxes on behalf of the Finance Minister

Therefore, choosing a person claiming as a tax consultant with no tax consultant license, is surely not a right choice.

Why Should Be Competent?

Competency is basically required in any field of work since in general it truly contributes to the success achieved in the future. In the tax field, competency for tax consultant level does not merely relate to comprehension of technical matters, it also involves multi perspective analytical skill.

In practice, a tax consultant with most excellent taxation expertise and tax analysis skill may not always succeed to fight for his argument in a dispute with the tax authority. The main strategy above all of this is to view tax issues from different perspectives, not only from the taxpayer client and tax consultant perspectives. Understanding the tax officers’ perspective and their internal working procedure is one of the key element when finding best solution to the taxpayer clients.

Why Should Be Ethical?

When tax consultants are reluctant to conform to the code of ethics in performing tax rights and/or obligation of their taxpayer clients, for instance, by not reporting the appropriate tax due or encouraging their clients to take unlawful actions over their tax cases, they actually cause losses either in terms of State tax revenue or even their taxpayer clients' efficiency. Any misconduct done will potentially be detected in the future time.

Thus, using unethical tax consultants who do not utilize their own competency is absolutely not a smart choice. It will be only delaying problems, not solving them.