JAKARTA, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- After went through series of negotiation process with giant internet searching engine Google over the tax for its operation in Indonesia, a minister said on Thursday that Google has demonstrated positive signals during the process with its tax payment highly expected to commence in the second quarter this year.
"Negotiations related to Google tax issue are expected to be settled in the first quarter this year," Indonesia's Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said.
He pointed out that all Over the Top (OTT) providers operating their business in Indonesia are obliged to pay the tax to the government.
Google was initially reluctant to pay the tax to Indonesian government despite the fact that it runs an office in Jakarta to facilitate its operation in Indonesia.
Google did not allow Indonesian tax officials to examine the office's financial reports in September last year.
Google's transactions with its clients related to its operation in Indonesia were done in Singapore, reports said.
According to Indonesian tax office estimate, Google's unpaid tax stood at 5.2 trillion rupiah (388.7 million U.S. dollars) in 2015 alone, not including the amounts since its Indonesian office opened four years before.
Besides Google, Indonesian government is now also aiming to tax social media mogul Facebook which takes up 20 percent of commercial advertisements in Indonesia's OTT industry valued around 840 million U.S. dollars per year.
According to results of a survey carried out by Indonesian internet providers association, 132.7 million from the nation's total population of 256.2 million are internet users with 97.4 percent of them are actively accessing social media contents.
