Tax officials state that Google Indonesia, who records their profits at Google’s Asia Pacific headquarters, politely refused to be audited in June causing major suspicion. This resulted in Indonesia’s tax agency turning the case into a criminal one, which will likely takes years for judges to reach a final verdict. If Indonesia chooses to forgo blocking Google from their country, there are many things that should be considered. One of the largest search engines in the world may be fined for a $400 million charge in back taxes. Who can possibly charge Google that much and why? The country of Indonesia may charge Google this fine for underreporting their total income for 2015. Authoritative figures and members of the House of Representatives in Indonesia are threatening to block the usage of Google until the massive search engine has paid off all of its debt. Tax officials in Indonesia visited the Google headquarters and found that Google had been cheating the system, causing Google to face some serious IRS tax problems. According to Reuters, in 2015 Google Indonesia paid as little as “0.1 percent of the total income and value-added taxes” that it owed.
Not only will Indonesia not have access to the Google search engine, but they also won’t be able to use sites such as YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, etc. The impact it would make for business alone would be profound! It seems like the threat is an empty one; however, authoritative figures are putting their foot down on this matter because there is a lot of money at stake. There are a lot of variables that the country of Indonesia needs to consider before taking drastic measures in whatever they plan to do for Google. Google of Indonesia says that they are cooperating with this matter and they are complying with the country’s demands.