Tariffs of Customs E-Commerce Duties Will Be More Moderate

Jakarta -The government will provide a more moderate tariff for the perpetrators of e-commerce. Moderate tariffs are set to encourage the growth of domestic online trading.

Director General of Customs and Excise Ministry of Finance Heru Pambudi said that in principle the government does not make acceptance as the goal, but the determination of deminimus tariff and import duty for e-commerce actors aims to create a level of playing field, especially for small and medium enterprises.

“If it is too low, the SME will be disturbed, but if it is too high consumers will be too expensive,” said Heru at the Directorate General of Customs and Excise (DJBC) Office of the Ministry of Finance on Monday (28/05/2018).

When referring to Business records, initially DGCE is compiling a number of policies regarding the value of goods and the determination of its import duty. The first policy is to change the threshold for the value of imported goods which originally US $ 100 to US $ 75.

The value of US $ 75 is determined based on references from World Customs Organizations (WCO) guidelines for low value dutiable consignment. In addition to the US $ 75 threshold, the government will also revise the threshold for items currently above US $ 100.

However, in his journey, the government had issued a statement to impose import duty for all e-commerce goods that go to Indonesia. In other words, the perpetrators of e-commerce can not enjoy deminimus limitations as previously formulated.

An official from the Ministry of Finance recently recieved to Bisnis.com that the tariffs for e-commerce goods are in the range of 1% -2% including the import tax (PDRI). Although it does not explain the reason for its determination, the purpose of imposition of e-commerce goods duties is a strategy for empowerment of domestic industry.

Related to that, Heru Pambudi said the amount of tariffs for e-commerce goods will be announced at the time the government regulations related to e-commerce is completed. “I think the goal is the level playing fields, which now apply normal rates that do not use e-commerce, we’ll see what it looks like,” he explained.