(Oct 5): Indonesia plans to require online merchants to own tax identification numbers starting this year, part of efforts to boost revenue and improve compliance in the fast-growing e-commerce industry.

PT Tokopedia and PT Bukalapak.com will be among e-commerce companies which will ask sellers for identification numbers, known as NPWP, as a condition to operate on their platforms, according to Robert Pakpahan, the Finance Ministry’s director general of taxes. These platforms will submit a monthly report of transactions to the government, he said.

“We want to improve tax enforcement but we don’t want to scare the startups,” Pakpahan said in an interview in Jakarta. “Instead of the startups collecting taxes, their merchants will perform self-assessment on the arrears.”

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