Initiating Gender-Responsive Budgeting: Implementation of Earmarking Tax on Cigarette Tax Policy

Taxes as the largest source of state revenues shall ideally consider the issue of gender equality, in fact the policy tends to overlook gender issue, for instance income tax law only consider men as a head of family, instead of women. Earmarking tax can be used as an instrument to allocate state revenues for certain expenditures to achieve certain interests expected by the government. One of the earmarking tax policies in Indonesia is applied to cigarette tax that is imposed by provincial government. This study aims to analyze the earmarking tax on cigarette taxes in the perspective of gender-responsive budgeting. This research applied a qualitative approach through literature study and in-depth interviews to collect the data. The findings show that the implementation of earmarking tax on cigarette taxes has not paid attention to the aspect of Gender-Responsive Budgeting. Due to different interpretations between the stakeholders involved both at the central and regional government levels, the allocation of state revenues tends to be equated with other allocations without paying attention to the concept of earmarking tax. Furthermore, the state and regional financial management systems have not accommodated the earmarking tax concept. It is essential to build a framework of study regarding new policies on sensitive-gender tobacco control, particularly Gender-Responsive Budgeting, specifically concerned with the allocation of tax revenues for empowering women.