Easy to live in, hard to belong to. Here is what residency, tax and a passport really involve.
Living in Indonesia is easy. Belonging to it is not. You can hold residency for years, but the country taxes your worldwide income once you qualify, and citizenship means renouncing the passport you have.
Getting permission is easier than people expect. What comes after is the hard part: living in Indonesia brings tax rules, a long residency ladder and a closed door on citizenship, and those catch far more people out than the visa ever does.
Updated August 2026
How a country decides what it can tax you on. "Worldwide" means income you earn anywhere; "territorial" means only income earned inside the country; "remittance basis" means only the foreign income you actually bring into the country.
The profit you make when you sell something for more than you paid, like shares or property.
Whether you can keep your current passport after becoming a citizen here. "Conditional" means it is limited or not guaranteed: allowed only in certain cases, or tolerated in practice but not written into law.
Under the Common Reporting Standard, tax authorities in participating countries automatically share information about each other's residents' bank accounts.
| Annual taxable income | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to IDR 60M | 5% |
| IDR 60M to IDR 250M | 15% |
| IDR 250M to IDR 500M | 25% |
| IDR 500M to IDR 5B | 30% |
| Over IDR 5B | 35% |
Non-taxable income (PTKP) of IDR 54,000,000/yr for the taxpayer, plus IDR 4,500,000 each for a spouse and up to three dependants, reduces the base before the brackets apply. Rent from land or buildings is taxed separately at 10% final. Non-residents pay 20% flat on Indonesia-source income.
Sources: tax · immigration
Here is a rough estimate of how much income tax you might pay in Indonesia. Because it taxes worldwide income, foreign salary, a pension, dividends and other income all fall into the same progressive brackets.
Money you earn from work or business done inside Indonesia. Income earned where you live is almost always taxable there, so it feeds the brackets in full.
Income from outside Indonesia: salary, freelance, a pension, rent and the like. Indonesia taxes worldwide income, so this joins the same brackets as local income. A tax treaty with the source country can reduce or credit what you owe, and pensions especially are often taxed differently under a treaty, so treat this as a rough figure.
Dividends from companies or funds outside Indonesia. They are taxed as ordinary income here unless you reinvest them locally for three years, which the toggle under the field applies. A treaty may also credit tax already withheld abroad.
A rough guide only. It applies the single-status personal allowance (PTKP), taxes foreign dividends as ordinary income unless you reinvest them locally, and ignores social security, tax treaties and the skilled-worker exemption. Confirm your own numbers with a tax adviser.
Tax rates from PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries.
What it costs to get and keep each long-stay permit, cheapest first.
Indicative figures for mid-2026; amounts and fees change, and the E33F pension threshold is disputed between sources. Confirm current numbers with Indonesian immigration (imigrasi.go.id), and see our Indonesia visa guide for the detail on each route.
Many people need to move money before they can even open an Indonesian bank account. Rent, visa deposits and legal fees are often due early, so choosing a cheap transfer provider can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Whether you land in Bali or Jakarta, a wire from your home bank is rarely the cheapest way to move it. Compare providers on the rupiah that arrive, not the rate they quote.
Indonesia scores well on the things you feel day to day: it is warm, cheap and reasonably safe, with good healthcare in the big cities. It loses points on property rights and the long, uncertain road to a passport. Each score is out of 100 and compared with the other countries on RoamFX; tap the info icon on any row for the reasoning.
The same country can be easy for one kind of move and closed to another. Each score mixes the visa route and how that kind of income is taxed with cost of living, safety and the rest. Open "Why this score" for the reasoning.
Living on a pension, usually 50 or older.
The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Retired early, living on dividends, interest and gains.
The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Paid by clients or an employer in another country.
The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Hired by a company in the country, on a work permit.
The other rows come from the living-here scores above.
Living in Indonesia almost always means one of a handful of places, and most foreigners never leave them. Where people land tends to follow what they are: a remote worker, a retiree, or someone on a corporate posting.
The remote-work capital of Southeast Asia: cafes, coworking and surf. Social, busy and increasingly expensive.
Inland and greener, built around yoga, food and a slower pace.
Calm and flat on the east coast; Sanur and Lovina draw older residents who want Bali without the crowds.
Where the actual jobs are: finance, energy, embassies and multinationals, usually on company packages with international schools.
A cheaper, lower-key spillover from Bali for people who find it too crowded.
Cultural, cheap and student-heavy, with a small but steady long-stay scene.
The practical things people look up before a move.
MythThe visa is the hard part.
RealityGetting a KITAS is usually the easy bit. Becoming a tax resident, and what that does to your worldwide income, is what catches people out.
MythA KITAS lets you work.
RealityOnly a work KITAS does. A spouse or retirement KITAS does not, on its own.
MythLive in Bali and your income is tax-free.
RealityOnce you are a resident, Indonesia taxes income you earn anywhere, not just what you make locally.
MythYou can buy a villa and own the land.
RealityFreehold is reserved for Indonesian citizens. Foreigners get a right of use instead: Hak Pakai can run up to 80 years across its extensions, but it is not ownership.
MythResidency leads smoothly to a passport.
RealityCitizenship is rare, and it means renouncing your current one.
Yes, if you fit one of the permit routes. There is no general "just move here" option, so the real question is which permit you qualify for. We explain each route in detail in our Indonesia visa guide; the usual ways in are:
Residency in Indonesia is a ladder, and most people never reach the top. You start on a KITAS, a temporary stay permit tied to a specific purpose and usually valid one to two years at a time. Hold a KITAS for the same purpose for two to four years and you become eligible for a KITAP, the permanent stay permit, valid five years and renewable.
Getting citizenship is much harder. Naturalization typically needs five years of continuous legal residence (or ten non-continuous), plus language ability, financial capacity, good conduct, ministerial approval, and renouncing your current citizenship. Indonesia does not allow dual nationality, so becoming Indonesian means giving up the passport you already hold. That single condition, not the paperwork, is why very few long-term residents apply.
The KITAS-to-KITAP step is realistic if your life here is stable. Citizenship is a long shot, and for most people not worth what it costs.
Indonesia taxes residents on their worldwide income, not just what they earn locally. A KITAS valid for more than 183 days is often treated as a sign that you intend to live in Indonesia, so many foreigners become tax residents from the start of their stay instead of after physically spending 183 days in the country. From then on, salary, a pension, rent, interest, royalties and foreign dividends all go into the same progressive brackets, up to 35%, wherever they come from. A tax treaty with your home country can change how some of it is taxed.
On paper Indonesia looks heavily taxed. In practice, several exemptions can make a big difference, especially for investors. Reinvest domestic or foreign dividends into Indonesia (government bonds, deposits, mutual funds) and hold them three years, and they are tax-free instead. Capital gains are treated by asset: listed Indonesian shares are taxed at 0.1% of the sale value and property at 2.5%, both final, while other assets are generally taxed as income. Skilled newcomers can also be taxed on Indonesia-source income only for a limited window at the start.
Indonesia also takes part in the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), so participating tax authorities can exchange information about financial accounts. And unlike a territorial system such as Panama or Paraguay, it does not leave income from outside the country alone. If your plan was to live in Bali and keep earning abroad untouched, that only works if you qualify for one of the exemptions above.
Rent, at least at first. Foreigners cannot own freehold land in Indonesia, so buying always means a workaround, and you should not sink a lump sum into one until you know a place suits you. Renting also keeps you mobile, which matters when most people are on one- or two-year permits and their first neighborhood is rarely their last.
One quirk defines renting here: you usually pay the whole lease up front. Outside serviced apartments, Indonesian landlords, and Bali villa owners especially, want a year in advance as standard, and two or three years for a good villa. That money is the rent, not a returnable deposit. A place quoted at a monthly figure will still often want twelve months in a single payment. In Bali, villa leases are frequently priced in US dollars but paid in rupiah, so the exchange rate on the day changes what you actually hand over. Cheaper monthly options exist, from serviced apartments in Jakarta to a kos (a rented room, the student and young-nomad default), but the villa market runs on annual deals.
Paying a year up front also shifts the balance of power, and not toward you. Once a landlord is holding twelve months of rent, the incentive to fix things fades. Many owners do little upkeep at all, and expats quickly learn that when the water pump fails or the air conditioning dies, sorting it out tends to land on the tenant. Indonesian law says a landlord has to keep a place livable, but enforcing that is slow and your leverage is gone the moment the money changes hands. Get the split of repair costs into the lease before you sign, down to who services the air conditioning and the pool, and push to pay in stages rather than the whole year at once; some owners will take most of it up front and the rest over the following months.
Buying needs real care. The freehold title Indonesians hold, Hak Milik, is closed to foreigners. In your own name you can hold a right-to-use title (Hak Pakai) or strata title on an apartment, or take a long leasehold, which is how most foreigners "buy" a Bali villa, usually on a 25 or 30-year term. Putting land in a trusted Indonesian's name, the so-called "nominee" arrangement, is not ownership: it is legally unenforceable, the courts will not back you if it sours, and foreigners lose money on it every year. If you buy, use a proper Hak Pakai or leasehold structure with a lawyer. For qualifying purchases there is also the Second Home Visa route, covered in our Indonesia visa guide.
When you rent, most people work more than one channel at once:
Shipping your life over is possible: used personal effects can come in with a KITAS or KITAP. The process involves paperwork and approval, so do not expect it to be quick or simple. Importing a car is taxed heavily enough that most people sell up and buy locally.
Getting connected is cheap and quick: Telkomsel, XL Axiata and Indosat all sell a prepaid number against your passport and register it at the counter, and you want one in the first week, because bank verification, QRIS payments, GoPay, OVO, DANA, Gojek and Grab all run through a local number.
Your phone is the problem. Indonesia keeps a register of handsets, and one you bought abroad is not on it. The shop that sells you the SIM files a tourist registration that clears your handset for 90 days. Stay past it and the phone works on Wi-Fi only on Indonesian networks; another SIM will not help, because the block follows the handset, not the number.
Living here means registering the phone with customs. Do it in the arrivals hall before you leave the customs area: the first USD 500 of the phone's value is free, which covers a mid-range phone outright. Anything above that is charged 10% import duty, with VAT of about 11% on top, and since June 2025 there is no income tax on a passenger's own phone. Leave the terminal first and you have 60 days to register at a customs office, but the same rates then apply to the whole value. Two devices per passenger. The calculator below works out what your phone would cost.
There are two ways around it. A roaming eSIM from a foreign provider connects as international roaming, which the register does not cover; a local eSIM does not help, since it is an Indonesian profile under the same rules. The other way is to buy the phone in Indonesia, where everything sold legally is registered already.
Customs uses its own weekly exchange rate, so the final rupiah amount can differ a little. A phone you register late, outside the customs area, pays on the full price.
Thinking of buying a new iPhone first? See what iPhones cost in Indonesia, compared with Singapore and Malaysia.
Buying a car or a motorbike here is straightforward. A foreigner can register a car or a motorbike in their own name, and what the registration office (Samsat) wants is a stay permit rather than citizenship: a KITAS or KITAP, the passport behind it, and the residence paperwork that goes with the permit, which for a KITAS holder is the SKTT certificate. Some offices ask for a tax number as well. On a tourist visa you cannot register a vehicle at all, so bikes bought by short-stayers stay in somebody else's name.
Two documents come with the vehicle. The STNK is the registration card you keep with it: it lasts five years, with the road tax paid and the card endorsed annually, and an inspection and new plates at the five-year mark. The BPKB is the ownership book, and whoever is named in it owns the vehicle, whatever the receipt says. Buying without transferring the BPKB into your name leaves you with possession and no title, and with the arrears attached to the vehicle still to settle.
The transfer itself is cheaper than it used to be: the duty on used-vehicle transfers, BBNKB II, was abolished nationally on 5 January 2025, leaving administrative fees of a few hundred thousand rupiah on a motorbike plus an inspection at Samsat. Check that the STNK is current first. Under the 2009 traffic law a vehicle left un-renewed for two years after its STNK expires can be deleted from the register, and a deleted vehicle cannot be registered again. Annual road tax is charged on the vehicle's assessed value, and you need an Indonesian driving license, SIM A for a car or SIM C for a motorbike, to be legal on the road with it.
Most people who say they want to live in Indonesia mean Bali. It is one island in a country of more than 17,000, and it holds the bulk of the foreign-resident community. None of the rules on this page change when you land there: the same KITAS options, the same worldwide-income tax, and the same ban on foreign land ownership apply exactly as they do in Jakarta. What changes is daily life, and the gap between the two is wide enough that Bali has its own guide.
Rent, healthcare, traffic, water, the wet season and what a month actually costs are all covered in living in Bali. For the rest of the island, our Bali guide covers neighborhoods and getting set up, the Bali visa guide walks through each permit, and is Bali safe? answers the question most people ask next.
Most foreign families in Indonesia use an SPK school, short for Satuan Pendidikan Kerja Sama, the licensed category that replaced the old international-school label in 2014. Foreign students at these schools study Indonesian language and culture alongside the imported curriculum. Public schools teach in Bahasa Indonesia and rarely take foreign children.
Where you live decides the bill. Published primary fees run from about IDR 200 million a year in Bali to IDR 519 million in Jakarta. Canggu Community School and Green School sit at the Bali end. ACG, the British School Jakarta and Jakarta Intercultural School are all far above them.
The annual capital levy is the part families miss. ACG charges IDR 41 million a year on top of tuition, the British School Jakarta 62 million and Jakarta Intercultural School 68 million. Registration is separate again and runs into the tens of millions.
Last checked on: August 2026
Last checked on: August 2026
Fees vary by school. See the schools and more living costs on the Indonesia cost of living page.
Indonesia is a great place to live and a poor place to chase a passport. If you want to build a life in Bali or Jakarta, the residency routes are workable, the cost of living is low, and, if you use the local reliefs, the tax system can be less burdensome than the 35% headline suggests. If you came purely for a second passport, look elsewhere: no dual citizenship, and naturalization ends in giving up the one you have.
Go in wanting the country and it makes sense. Go in wanting a quick citizenship and you will be disappointed.
This guide is based on public information and is not legal, tax or immigration advice. Rules change, so always confirm anything important with a qualified professional.
Living in Indonesia?
Get our guides before you go: the visa rules that keep changing, the tax traps, and what living somewhere costs.
On a local SIM, for 90 days. Indonesia blocks handsets that are not on its IMEI register, and the shop that sells you a prepaid SIM files a tourist registration that clears yours for 90 days. After that the phone is Wi-Fi only on Indonesian networks and a new SIM will not change it. To keep using it you register the IMEI with customs: the first USD 500 of declared value is exempt at the airport arrivals hall, while registering at a customs office later, up to 60 days after arrival, puts duty and VAT on the full value, about a fifth of what the phone is worth. A foreign roaming eSIM is outside the rule, and phones bought in Indonesia are registered already.
Yes, in your own name, with a KITAS or KITAP, your passport and proof of where you live. On a tourist visa you cannot register one. The ownership book, the BPKB, is what decides who owns the vehicle, so transfer it into your name rather than leaving it in the seller's: the arrears stay with the vehicle, and whoever renews the STNK next settles them. Transferring a used vehicle got cheaper when the transfer duty was abolished on 5 January 2025, and a motorbike now costs only administrative fees and an inspection. Importing your own car, by contrast, is taxed heavily enough that almost nobody does it.
Once you are a tax resident, yes: residents are taxed on income from anywhere in the world, including foreign salary, rent and royalties, at progressive rates up to 35%. But the reliefs matter. Foreign dividends reinvested in Indonesia and held three years are exempt, and skilled newcomers may be taxed only on Indonesian-source income for a limited window. Your outcome depends on your mix of income, so check your own situation with a tax adviser.
No. Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship for adults. Naturalizing requires renouncing your existing nationality, which is the main reason very few foreign residents pursue citizenship.
It depends on the category. Broadly, you hold a KITAS for the same purpose for a few consecutive years before a KITAP (permanent stay permit) is open to you, and the qualifying period is shorter for the spouse of an Indonesian than for most other routes. There is no universal conversion rule, so check the one that applies to your permit. The KITAP itself is valid five years and renewable.
Not freehold. Hak Milik is reserved for Indonesian citizens. A foreign resident can register Hak Pakai, a right of use running 30 years that can be extended by 20 and renewed by 30, so up to 80 in the full sequence, and can hold an apartment on strata title. A leasehold contract is the other common route.
Indonesia offers the E33G remote-worker KITAS for people earning from foreign clients or employers, and it is often described as leaving foreign-source income untaxed. Be careful with that: your immigration status and your tax status are separate. Whether foreign income is taxed depends on the tax rules and reliefs that apply to you, not on the visa label alone. Confirm your position with a tax adviser before relying on it.
