28JUL

Bali's arrivals outrun its visitor levy

2 min read

08:48UTC

Bali's tourism chief reported 3.7 million foreign arrivals to 23 July and PWA levy receipts of Rp208 billion to 26 July, without putting a compliance percentage on the pair.

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Key takeaway

Bali's published levy shortfall is measured against arrivals, a population much wider than the visitors who owe it.

I Wayan Sumarajaya, head of the Bali provincial tourism office, said foreign arrivals to the island reached roughly 3.7 million by 23 July ¹. The PWA (Pungutan Wisatawan Asing, the Rp150,000 foreign-visitor levy payable on arrival) had collected Rp208 billion by 26 July, up from Rp203 billion three days earlier. Australia remains the largest source market, ahead of India and China. Both counts run from January.

Every one of those arrivals paying the levy would have produced about Rp555 billion, and Sumarajaya has published the resulting ratio himself for earlier periods using the same total-arrivals denominator: 32 per cent for the whole of 2024, and 36 per cent for January to October 2025 ². He has attached no percentage to this July snapshot, and neither will we. Ombudsman RI's Bali office has separately flagged PWA compliance as low and called for better governance of the collection ³.

That denominator flatters the shortfall, because arrivals and liable visitors are not the same population. Diplomatic and official visa holders, transport crew, holders of KITAS and KITAP long-stay residence permits, family-reunification and student visa holders, and golden-visa holders are all exempt ⁴. Bali's long-stay foreign community, the cohort this briefing follows, sits almost entirely inside those exemptions, so the uncollected share does not belong to the resident nomad. Compliance among visitors who actually owe the levy therefore runs higher than the arrivals arithmetic implies, and nobody publishes the liable base that would settle by how much.

Enforcement explains the rest. Indonesia's immigration directorate has run a permanent 100-person task force across ten Bali areas since January and named sweeps such as Dharma Dewata, which detained 62 foreign nationals across three regencies in April . None of that apparatus collects the levy. A charge payable at the airport, at a booth or through an app, with no consequence attached to walking past all three, does not collect itself. The province has spent two years demonstrating that it will pursue the visa violation it can deport for rather than the Rp150,000 it cannot.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Bali charges foreign tourists a one-off entry levy of Rp150,000 (about USD 9). Provincial officials reported 3.7 million foreign arrivals by 23 July but only Rp208 billion collected, well short of what full payment from every arrival would produce. Indonesia's national ombudsman has flagged this gap as a sign the collection system itself needs fixing. Part of the shortfall is not evasion: long-term residents, students, transport crew, diplomats and family-reunification visa holders are all exempt from the levy, so not every arrival was ever expected to pay. Bali's tourism office has previously reported the actual paid-compliance rate at 32 per cent in 2024 and 36 per cent for the first ten months of 2025, though no comparable 2026 figure has yet been published.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The PWA levy is collected at arrival through a system with no automated cross-check against Bali's own immigration entry records. That gap is what Ombudsman RI has flagged as a governance problem rather than a compliance one.

Exemptions for KITAS, KITAP, diplomatic, transport-crew, family-reunification, student and golden-visa categories also narrow the liable base well below total arrivals, meaning some of the gap between arrivals and receipts reflects design, not evasion.

What could happen next?

Risk
Continued gaps between arrivals and levy receipts, absent a published 2026 compliance figure, risk being read as worse than the confirmed 2025 baseline without evidence the rate has actually declined.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Rp208 billion collected against 3.7 million arrivals implies an effective take-up well short of full compliance at the Rp150,000 per-arrival rate, consistent with the compliance figures I Wayan Sumarajaya has published separately: 32 per cent for 2024 and 36 per cent for January to October 2025. Those are the only confirmed compliance rates on record; no 2026 figure has been published, so the gap should be read against the 2025 baseline, not assumed to have moved.

Exemptions narrow the theoretically liable base well below total arrivals: diplomatic and official visas, transport crew, KITAS and KITAP holders, family-reunification visas, students and golden-visa holders are all excluded from the levy. That means even full compliance among liable visitors would not close the gap to the Rp150,000-per-arrival full-payment equivalent, since a meaningful share of the 3.7 million arrivals were never liable to pay.

Sources:Tribun-Bali·detikTravel·DDTC News

Mentions:I Wayan Sumarajaya →Bali →PWA →Ombudsman RI →Indonesia →KITAS →KITAP →China →India →Australia →Dharma Dewata →

First Reported In

Update #12 · Portugal's backlog moved into the courts

Tribun-Bali· 28 Jul 2026

Read original →

Different Perspectives

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Georgia's Ministry of Internal Affairs

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South Aegean and Crete municipalities

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Bali's provincial tourism office

I Wayan Sumarajaya reported 3.7 million arrivals and Rp208 billion in PWA levy receipts to late July without attaching a compliance percentage this time. He has previously put compliance at 32 to 36 per cent measured against total arrivals, a denominator that includes exempt long-stay residents.

Croatia's Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister

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