Influencers crackdown: Finance Minister on social media users flexing their wealth

The “crazy rich” Indonesians are becoming the talk of the town these days. This is due to the recent fraud case involving Indra Kenz. He was accused of money laundering through the Binomo application. Indra has been arrested and all of his assets are confiscated. 

Rich Indonesians flexing their wealth is not a rare occurrence, especially on social media. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that she is “glad” whenever she comes across such people. 

"We are actually happy when we see people showing off their account numbers on social media, competing to see who has the biggest [amount of] account. When someone shows off that  [he/she] has a several billion, our tax officials will then say ‘yes, we will  come [to investigate],’” the minister said at an event held to introduce the tax harmonisation law. She added that once the law takes effect, these “crazy rich” are obligated to pay more taxes. 

According to her, the Directorate General of Taxes also conducts tax monitoring through social media, observing those who show off their assets online. She said that it is one of the efforts to maintain public trust, proving that the state is actually doing fair tax collection. 

She explained that the Directorate General of Taxes can now access all financial and non-financial institutions in order to obtain taxpayers’ information. In addition, Indonesia is included in the tax data exchange system or Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) between countries.

With that being said, she can ensure that the Directorate General of Taxes now owns a more complete and extensive data of taxpayers’ assets, both of those residing in the country and those residing abroad.

“Even those who don't show off [their wealth] can be identified, let alone those who show off,” she concluded.