Last reviewed: August 2026  |  Covers the Rp 10,000 rate, which documents need a stamp, e-meterai, and what an unstamped contract is actually worth.

Indonesian Stamp Duty: What Needs a Materai and What Happens If You Skip It

Two things about Indonesian stamp duty are worth knowing before anything else.

First, an unstamped contract is still a valid contract. Stamp duty is a tax on a document, not a condition of the agreement being binding. People are told the opposite constantly.

Second, the penalty for stamping late is the duty plus 100%, not 200%. The 200% figure belongs to the old 1985 law and now applies only to documents dated before 2021. Most Indonesian websites still quote it.

The rate: Rp 10,000, flat

Since 1 January 2021, stamp duty has been a single tariff of Rp 10,000 per document under Article 5 of Law No. 10 of 2020. It is charged once per document, not per page and not per signature.

The old Rp 3,000 and Rp 6,000 stamps were usable during a one-year transition and have had no validity since 1 January 2022. They cannot be exchanged for money. If you are holding a strip of them, they are decoration.

The rate and the money threshold below can only be changed by Government Regulation after consultation with parliament. No such regulation has been issued, so as at August 2026 both figures stand.

Which documents need a stamp

Article 3 of the law splits this into two groups. The first is documents made to explain a civil event:

The second group is simply any document tendered as evidence in court. That is a separate head of charge, and the duty falls due at the moment the document is submitted to the court.

The threshold is misread constantly. The Rp 5,000,000 test applies to receipts and debt acknowledgements, not to every document that happens to mention a number. A supply contract worth Rp 900 million is stampable because it is an agreement, not because of its value. And a document stating exactly Rp 5,000,000 falls outside the threshold, because the law says "more than".

What is exempt

Article 7 lists documents on which duty is never imposed. The ones that come up most often:

• Any form of diploma or educational certificate. No stamp, ever.
• Salary, pension and allowance receipts, and documents submitted to obtain them.
• Transport documents: bills of lading, goods storage letters, proof of dispatch and receipt.
• Receipts for tax payments and for state money from the treasury.
• Internal money-receipt notes made for an organisation's own purposes.
• Savings records, and payment of savings to a depositor by a bank or cooperative.
• Pawn letters.
• Documents issued by Bank Indonesia in conducting monetary policy.

Keep Article 7 separate from Article 22 in your head. Article 7 is a permanent exclusion, meaning the duty never arises. Article 22 is a discretionary exemption granted by Government Regulation for things like disaster recovery land transfers and non-commercial religious or social transfers.

Who pays

That second row has a consequence people miss. A two-party agreement signed in duplicate strictly needs two stamps, one on each counterpart, one borne by each party. Stamping a single copy does not discharge the other party's liability on theirs.

You can contract out of this. Article 9(6) expressly allows the parties to agree who pays. That allocates the cost between you; it does not change who the tax office regards as the taxpayer.

e-Meterai

The electronic stamp is made and distributed by Peruri, the state printing corporation. A paper document takes an adhesive stamp, signed across so that part of the signature sits on the paper and part on the stamp. That is physically impossible on a PDF, which is why electronic documents take an e-meterai instead.

The law never says "e-meterai is mandatory". What it does is make the stamp follow the medium. In practice, if the document is natively electronic, the e-meterai is the only workable option, which is why government recruitment portals, university admissions and e-procurement systems all require it.

A pasted image of a stamp is worth nothing. An e-meterai is only valid if it was affixed through the official Sistem Meterai Elektronik and carries the unique 22-character serial and the required markings. Fail either test and the document is treated as unstamped. Screenshots, copied images and reused stamp files all fall at this hurdle.

Verify one with the Peruri scanner app or the online verification page. The face value is Rp 10,000; distributors may add a service fee on top, and that fee is theirs, not tax.

So what happens if a document has no stamp?

This is the question everyone actually wants answered.

The contract is still valid

Stamp duty is defined in the law as "a tax on documents". Nothing in the statute makes an unstamped document void. Contract validity is governed by Article 1320 of the Civil Code, which requires consent, capacity, a definite subject matter and a lawful cause. A stamp is not on that list.

So if someone tells you your agreement is void because nobody stuck a materai on it, they are wrong.

But you have an evidence problem

The consequence bites in court. A document tendered as evidence is itself an object of stamp duty, with the duty falling due on submission. The Supreme Court set aside an unstamped receipt on exactly this basis in decision 983 K/Sip/1972, and that remains the recorded position.

The practical fix is to stamp it and have it validated before you tender it, which is what the next section covers.

And officials are barred from touching it

Article 21 prohibits officials acting in their office from receiving, considering or holding a document with unpaid duty, from attaching it to related documents, from copying it, or from annotating it. Breach carries administrative sanctions. This is why notaries and court registrars are inflexible about stamps. It is their exposure, not pedantry.

Stamping late: pemeteraian kemudian

Subsequent stamping applies where duty was not paid or was underpaid, or where a document is being used as court evidence. What you pay depends on which of those it is:

The last row is worth reading twice. If the only reason you are stamping is that you are about to tender the document as evidence, there is no penalty. You pay Rp 10,000.

How it is done

The duty itself can be paid with an adhesive stamp, an e-meterai, or a tax payment slip. The sanction must be paid by tax payment slip. The document is then validated with a "cap Pemeteraian Kemudian" by either a post office official or a tax office official.

A post office can only validate adhesive stamps. If you paid the duty by e-meterai or by payment slip, the post office cannot help you. You need the tax office. This catches people out and wastes an afternoon.

There is a time limit

The duty becomes time-barred five years after it fell due. Old documents eventually stop being a liability.

Criminal penalties for fake and reused stamps

Note the difference in the conjunctions. Forgery carries prison and a fine together. Reuse carries prison or a fine. That distinction is in the statute.

The extension of forgery liability to electronic stamps is new. It did not exist under the 1985 law, and it is the provision that makes circulating e-meterai image files genuinely risky rather than merely ineffective.

What changed recently

• PMK 78/2024, effective 1 November 2024, consolidated three earlier ministerial regulations into one. Anything citing PMK 134/2021 for subsequent stamping is out of date.
• Distribution of e-meterai to appointed collectors now runs direct from Peruri rather than through distributors.
• A new stamp type, Meterai Teraan Digital, was added for collectors using the tax office system.
• Remittance and reporting deadlines were unified at the 15th of the following month. They used to be the 10th and the 20th.
• From 2025, stamp duty returns are filed through Coretax.

Common questions

Is a contract without a materai valid in Indonesia?

Yes. Validity is governed by Article 1320 of the Civil Code and a stamp is not one of its requirements. The stamp matters for using the document as evidence in court and for the tax liability, not for whether the agreement binds the parties.

How much is stamp duty in Indonesia?

Rp 10,000 per document, a single flat rate since 1 January 2021 under Law No. 10 of 2020. The old Rp 3,000 and Rp 6,000 stamps stopped being valid on 1 January 2022.

What is the penalty for stamping a document late?

The duty plus a 100% administrative sanction, so Rp 20,000 in total on a Rp 10,000 document. The 200% figure widely quoted online is the old rate and now applies only to documents whose duty fell due before 1 January 2021. Where the only reason for stamping is that the document is going to court, there is no sanction.

Do I need a stamp on both copies of a contract?

Strictly yes. Each party is liable for the counterpart it receives, so a two-party agreement in duplicate needs two stamps. The parties may agree between themselves who pays, but that does not change who is liable to the tax office.

Can I just paste an image of an e-meterai into my PDF?

No. An e-meterai is only valid if affixed through the official electronic stamp system and carrying its unique serial number and markings. A pasted image leaves the document legally unstamped, and circulating forged or reused electronic stamps carries criminal liability of up to seven years.

Do diplomas need a materai?

No. Article 7 exempts all forms of educational certificate outright.

Where this comes up

In practice stamp duty becomes a problem in three places: a contract that needs to go to court and was never stamped, a stack of historic documents discovered during due diligence, and e-meterai that turns out to have been affixed improperly. All three are fixable, and none of them make your underlying agreement invalid.

We handle document review, subsequent stamping and evidence preparation for foreign clients in Bali. If you are unsure whether something in your file is going to hold up, send it over.

General information on Indonesian law as at August 2026, not legal or tax advice. Rates and procedures change. Take advice on your own documents before relying on any of this.

Sources

• UU No. 10/2020 on Stamp Duty: Articles 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32
• PMK No. 78/2024 on the implementation of stamp duty: Articles 44, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55
• Indonesian Civil Code Article 1320
• Supreme Court decision 983 K/Sip/1972
• PP No. 86/2021 on procurement and sale of stamps