SELAMAT TINGGAL

Selamat tinggal means ''good-bye'' in Indonesian. After writing the Ta x Notes column for more than twenty years, the author is taking his le ave and heading for Indonesia, a country with a great mining future. B ob Parsons, who is Chairman of the World Mining Group at Price Waterho use and will continue to wear that mantle in his firm's Jakarta office , looks back at some of the highlights of the fiscal scene over the pa st two decades. In this edition of Tax Notes, I'm going to break with CIM tradition, and get personal. You see, this is my last column as au thor of Tax Notes, because my wife and I are packing our bags and catc hing a one-way flight for Jakarta. The plan is that I spend three year s in Indonesia fortifying Price Waterhouse's successful mining practic e in the region. After that, who knows? I have enjoyed the privilege o f writing Tax Notes for over twenty years. Starting in 1976, I ghost w rote a few columns for Bob Brown, the founding partner of Price Waterh ouse's modern tax practice. Shortly after that, Bob and CIM made me so lely responsible for the column. I thought that it might be kind of fu n to look back over those twenty or so years, and highlight some of th e events, good and bad, and some of the personalities, equally good an d bad, that I experienced.