Foreigners married to Indonesians for at least five years may sooner or later be exempt from the Manpower Ministry’s expat hiring permit and its $1,200 annual fee, and the same exemption may also apply to working-age children of mixed marriages.
These changes are reportedly contained in the new Labour Protection Law, which was passed by the House of Representatives on 6 October 2026. But before you break out the champagne, note that the devil is in the detail and the final text of the law is still unpublished.
The law is expected to be signed by the president in November and then published in the State Gazette, at which point lawyers, employers and expats with local spouses will be able to dissect the relevant clauses. However, even once the law is promulgated, some of its provisions will not come into effect until they are elaborated upon in supporting regulations, issued by either the president’s office or the Manpower Ministry. Such regulations could take several months or even years.
The core change for expats concerns the Foreign Worker Utilisation Plan (Rencana Penggunaan Tenaga Kerja Asing – RPTKA) – the mandatory authorization that Indonesian employers must obtain from the Manpower Ministry before hiring any foreign national. It comes with a $1,200 annual levy officially called the Foreign Worker Compensation Fund (DKP-TKA), derisively known as the “expat tax.”
The $1,200 fee, which must be paid in US dollars in pristine condition (creased greenbacks are sternly rejected), is classified as “non-tax state revenue” and supposedly goes toward training Indonesian workers. However, eight Manpower Ministry officials were convicted in April of running a multi-billion rupiah RPTKA extortion racket.
While the RPTKA may be waived for long-term married expats and working-age children with Indonesian-foreign parents, the usual requirements and fees will remain in place for the Temporary Stay Permit (ITAS) and Permanent Stay Permit (ITAP). Also, foreigners will still be banned from working in certain sectors such as human resources, the military and the civil service.
‘Positive Impact’
Businesses and advocates of rights for mixed marriages have welcomed the move to scale back RPTKA requirements. An expat director whose company supplies dozens of foreign English teachers to international and private schools in Indonesia applauded the shift. “If this goes ahead, it’s going to have a massive, positive impact on my operations,” he said. “For years, we’ve struggled under incredibly strict hiring quotas and exorbitant compliance costs. We tried hiring permanent residents on ITAP visas, but officials still found ways to ensure we paid heavily for our foreign hires.”
Despite his enthusiasm, the director noted that clarity is essential and manpower officials must be thoroughly familiarised with any new rules. “Whatever they decide to do, I hope it’s clear. Too many times in the past, officials weren’t sure of their own rules, leading to confusion over what was or wasn’t OK,” he said.
The Indonesian Mixed Marriage Society (PerCa), which has long campaigned for legal rights of Indonesian-foreign families, hailed the Labour Protection Law, saying it “carves a new history for mixed-marriage families”. A representative said PerCa provided input to parliament on the draft law and will next be closely monitoring the eventual implementing regulations.
‘We Need to Wait’
Indonesia Expat spoke to several lawyers who deal with foreign companies and expat recruitment. None were able to confirm the precise final wording of the law’s clauses on RPTKA exemptions for foreign workers. “Parts of the draft law were seen during discussions and although we’re told this has been passed, we need to wait until it’s promulgated,” said one employment lawyer.
An official comment came on 6 October, when Manpower Minister Yassierli listed 13 major breakthroughs in the new law, putting the 12th as: “the optimization and regulation of foreign workers who are legally married to Indonesian citizens, including children born from those legal marriages”.
Assuming the change goes ahead, it would resolve a long-running contradiction between Indonesia’s immigration policy and its labour law. While the 2011 Immigration Law gives mixed-marriage expats holding an ITAS or ITAP visa the right to work or do business to provide for their families, the Manpower Ministry has generally maintained that any foreigner doing work must have a corporate sponsor via the RPTKA process. However, the ministry recently clarified that foreign spouses running their own micro or small businesses do not need RPTKA approval.
Undoing the Omnibus Law
The RPTKA articles are but a small part of the newly passed Labour Protection Law, which ostensibly gives workers more power after years of aggressively pro-business reforms. Key changes include stricter outsourcing and contract limits, increased severance and changes to maternity leave, and greater social security protection for digital gig and informal workers.
Analysts say the law is President Prabowo Subianto’s move to put his own mark on labour policy by unwinding key elements of former president Joko Widodo’s signature economic legacy: the massive, pro-market Omnibus Law on Job Creation.
The original Omnibus Law on Job Creation has a turbulent history: It was passed in 2020, sparking widespread protests by unions and students. In 2021, the Constitutional Court boldly declared the law conditionally unconstitutional due to a lack of public consultation. Widodo then pushed it through in 2022 via an emergency regulation, which was ratified into law the following year, only for the Constitutional Court in October 2024 to order that several provisions be modified and a new labour law created within two years.
For mixed-marriage families and employers, the question now is when the promised RPTKA exemptions will actually take effect, and whether the law will usher in clear, consistent rules or simply create new layers of bureaucracy. As one seasoned expat in Jakarta commented: “It sounds good, but will it be another case of the old ‘we are going to make it easier’ without actually making it easier?”
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