Living in Indonesia.

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.

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:

• Work KITAS, sponsored by an Indonesian employer.
• Spouse KITAS, if you marry an Indonesian. One of the most common routes, but it does not by itself let you work; that needs a separate permit.
• Investor KITAS, if you set up or invest in a local company (PT PMA). Also shortens the road to permanent residency.
• Retirement KITAS, if you are 55 or over, with proof of a pension.
• Second Home Visa, if you park roughly USD 130,000 in a state bank or buy qualifying property.
• E33G remote-worker KITAS, for people earning from foreign clients or employers.

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:

• Property portals. Rumah123, Lamudi and the classifieds site OLX carry the widest nationwide listings. Bali villas are the exception: that market runs through agency sites rather than one big portal, so you browse several.
• Facebook groups. In Bali this is where the real rental market lives, with far more on offer than the portals show. It is also where the scams are, so never pay a deposit or a year's rent before seeing the place in person and meeting the owner or a genuine agent. Wiring money to hold a villa you have only seen in photos is the classic way people lose thousands.
• Agents. Rental and villa agents fill the expat hubs and save you the legwork. Check whether the fee falls on you or the owner, since it varies more here than in Thailand.
• Drive and look. Plenty of places never go online. "Disewakan" means for rent, "Dijual" for sale. Renting short-term while you scout on the ground beats committing from abroad.

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. At the arrivals hall the first USD 500 of the declared value is exempt, which covers most phones outright. After you leave the terminal you have 60 days to register at a customs office, without that exemption, so the charge falls on the whole declared value: 10% import duty and 11% VAT, and customs guidance also lists an income-tax charge of 10% with an Indonesian tax number (NPWP) or 20% without, which not every office applies to a passenger's own phone. Reckon on a fifth to two fifths of the phone's value. Two devices per passenger.

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.

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.

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.