JAKARTA can certainly not be allowed to lose out to the island of Batam. A close neighbor of Singapore, now this Indonesian island has an additional 5,084 taxpayers, as of the end of July. Tax revenues for the first quarter of 2001 were also above target—up from Rp508 billion to Rp512 billion. This is despite the fact that tax officials and facilities are far from ideal.

The search for unregistered taxpayers seems to be going on everywh