Legal Justice: The Abolition of the Principle of Bank Secrecy for Tax Interests in Indonesia

Abstract

As a member of the international community, Indonesia has a responsibility to participate in the execution of global policy. Recently, a global policy was implemented to address the sharing of financial information between countries. Financial information transparency between countries requires the sharing of bank customers’ financial information via both manual and automatic transmission. This policy aims to prevent economic crimes, including tax evasion. This study combines normative legal research and in-depth interviews aimed at determining how to determine how legal justice can be achieved in the context of the exchange of financial data for taxes purposes in Indonesia. The principle of bank secrecy functions as a safeguard to protect bank clients’ right to privacy, which is a human right that must be preserved. On the one hand, citizens have a civic duty to voluntarily fulfill their tax obligations. On the other hand, as bank clients, citizens also have the right to be protected from violations of privacy. Assuming the perspective of legal justice, this paper seeks to describe the balance between these two needs. Finally, the study’s results support the argument for abolishing the principle of bank secrecy, especially in the realm of taxation.