On Wednesday, May 3 rd 2017, Adinda Rizky Herdianti, student of Faculty of Economics
and Business Universitas Indonesia (FEB UI) got award as the best essay in student
essay and photo competition that was held by World Bank.
The winner announcement was done at Conference room of Indonesia Ministry of Finance
Office. The event was attended by several ambassador, such as Peter MacArthur
(Ambassador of Canada), Yvonne Baumann (Ambassador of Switzerland), and Vincent
Guérend (Ambassador of the European Union).
The other award recipient was Akhmad Faisal Lutfi from Universitas Jember who was the
runner up and Erikson Wijaya from Universitas Jenderal Soedirman who was the third
winner.
Herdianti got the first place by her essay titled “Reviewing Human Behavior Behind The
Taxpayers Obedience”.
In her opinion, she won the competition because she did not explore tax from science’s
point of view too much, but from something that was more popular, which was human
behavior.
“I was inspired by a book titled ‘Nudge’ by Thaler & Sustein that discuss about the effort to
influence other people’s decision without sorely forcing,” said her.
The book concept was aplicated to tax problem in Indonesia. In her essay, Herdianti
suggested two things, that were reducing complicated process from tax payment and
public transparency as well.
“Complicated process can be reduced by applying online process, meanwhile
transparency applied for creating bandwagon effect,” added her.
In her opinion, Indonesian people are still so communal and familial. So neighborhood
could strongly influence a person’s decision in doing something.
When tax revenue transparency information was posted at Directorate General of Taxes
web page in real time, the taxpayer could be encouraged to pay due to lots of people pay
taxes.
This competition was held by cooperation between Public Financial Management Multi-
Donor Trust Fund (PFM MDTF) of World Bank with Universitas Indonesia.
All essays that was participated in this competition discussed about how Indonesia could
build a tax system to improve revenue fairly and efficiently
The purpose of this competition was to find new ideas on managing public financial in
order to improve economic growth in Indonesia.
