The term NPWP has been buzzing around like an annoying bee since late last year, and I am one of the millions of people affected by the scheme the Government so sweetly trap us in: get an NPWP or die.
The funny thing is, I am actually not one of those people getting their first NPWP’s in 2008 or early 2009. No Ma’am, I got mine back in 2003. If you have been reading my blog for years (I know, nobody has) you might have noticed a particular post I wrote back in 2004 about a tax problem I had. I got an NPWP so early because back then I worked in a multinational company, and the government were so keen to press on the employees of MNC’s to get NPWP’s. Well, being a good citizen (too good, perhaps) even though I quit my job later that year, and earned perhaps less than the minimum wage doing a part time job instead, in 2004 I counted what I owed to the country. I made a payment to the post office, then sent my tax report to the tax office.
Later that year I got a summon from the tax office, saying that I was penalized for not reporting my income. WTF? After so much efforts, all the tax office could say to me was that they didn’t receive whatever I sent by post. I had no idea where my teeny-tiny sum of hard-earned money went, til today. The tax officer said I should pay the penalty and went on to appeal to tax court, because I had complete records that I had actually paid my tax. Bah. I paid and never bothered to appeal, as you can read in that old blog post of mine.
And this is what happened next: because we had moved house, I changed my KTP within the next 3 years. And I – rather purposefully – decided to report my finance situation to the tax office. For years. And years.
Fast forward to 2008: the sunset policy is on full force. The campus made me an NPWP (gulp). It was so easy to get one, the campus only turned in a copy of my KTP and suddenly I had an all new NPWP. And me, the stupid gook, I had been watching all those sunset policy commercials without once thinking I needed to report to the tax office (re my old NPWP). I thought, they would never be able to figure out that I had 2 NPWP’s, because I had changed my KTP.
Despite some friends warnings, it turned out that I was right, the reason they gave me a new NPWP was because they couldn’t track whether I had had an NPWP before. But the problem now is to deactivate one of the NPWP’s because there is no way in hell I want to have two NPWP’s.
Oh well, to make a long story short (short??? Short???) around two weeks ago I turned in a letter pleading the Kebayoran Lama tax office to deactivate my old NPWP, then turned in my yearly report to the Serpong tax office.
Let’s hope my old NPWP just die peacefully without my ever being put in trouble because of its short and wretched existence. Amen.
