Bali News / Bali Travel and Holiday Updates

Hard work by a number of government officials and legislators of Buleleng – the regency in North Bali – in inventing local regulation to regulate unregistered villas in the area seemed not to be followed by those implementing in the field. Since the regulation was officially launched back in 2007, seriousness in its implementation remained on question, leaving tens of villas in North Bali to live in peace without paying tax.

The regulation in use to bring unregistered villas into order in the area was local regulation for business license retribution for small hostels and lodgings. The plan was that villas registered as private residence will be closely monitored. A soon as it was proven that the villas got rented out for holiday accommodation, they will be immediately classified into either small hotel or lodging based on their facilities. Once brought into these classification the villa will have an obligation to register thenselves as business entity and pay retribution as regulated.

Head of regulation department of Buleleng regency office Made Widiartha explaied that the regulation has actually started in force since August 28th 2007. Implementation was supposed to be on the hands of culture and tourism office. “After a long series of validations by the provical government and the country’s treasury minister, implementation was handed over to excuting unit, the regency culture and tourism office”, he explained.

Interviewed separately by Bali Post daily, head of tourism developent agency of the regency culture and tourism office I Putu Tastra Wijaya admitted that his office has received the regulation to be implementation. He also admitted that the regulation has not been implemented yet. “Not yet, at the moment we are still socializing it”, said Putu.

To the delay of implementation of a regulation which has been one year issued, head of Indonesian Democratic Party in Struggle (PDI-P) fraction in Buleleng house of representatives, Agus Yudiarsana, expressed his disappointment. The executive should have at least registered existing villas to be classified into relevant gorups. “Unfortunately so far we have never received any reports on its implementation. It has been really slow”, said Agus.

Head of the regency’s treasury office Nyoman Pastika confirmed that so fer the government has never reveived any retribution income from the villas which so far registered as private residence. He was waiting for implementation of the regulation, so the villas let for holiday accodation, which so far remained hiding behind private residence status, to start paying commercial retribution.